




























i 






■ 



■ I 



»*?■>»•■» •* 



V*V 



■ 



r. 4/,v. 




Class PHa2.8 7 
Book ,fr\VWfc> 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



By the same Author. 
* 

Heafcp. 

Henry Irving. 

A Chronicle of his American Tours. 
i6mo. Bound in Parchment Paper, $1.25. 

!lfa Preparation* 

The Life and Labours of Edwin Booth. 
The Stage Life of Adelaide Neilson. 
Memoir of Lawrence Barrett. 
Essays on the Acting of Ellen Terry. 
Memoir of John McCullough. 
The Wallack Family of Actors. 

Etc. 
GEO. J. COOMBES, 

Publisher, 

New-York. 



THE STAGE LIFE OF MARY ANDERSON. 





WPcMj 



THE STAGE LIFE 



MARY ANDERSON 



BY 

WILLIAM WINTER 

h 



' Like a great sea-mark, standing every fla-w 
And saving those that eye thee." 

— Shakespeare. 



M.1 
!s0 



NEW-YORK 

GEORGE J. COOMBES 

1886 






Copyright, 1886, 

by 

William Winter. 

All rights reserved. 



TO 
THE MEMORY OF 

CHARLES H. ANDERSON, 

THE FORTUNATE YET ILL-FATED FATHER, 

WHO, DYING WHEN HIS DAUGHTER WAS A LITTLE CHILD, 

MISSED EQUALLY THE KNOWLEDGE OF HER 

RENOWN AND THE BLESSING 

OF HER LOVE. 



PREFACE. 

The actress whose public life is recounted 
in this memoir and chronicle, though yet in 
the morning of her career, has already done a 
great work and has obtained a noble renown. 
It is customary to deplore that the glory of 
the dramatic artist is imsubstantial ; that it 
soon fades into oblivion , leaving no tangible 
and permanent result. Yet there is no richer 
or more abiding glory to be gained on earth 
than is secured in the exercise of ennobling 
influence upo?i humanity, and especially upon 
the development of the young/ and this privi- 
lege is peculiarly within the reach of the 
actor. It is true that even the finest achieve- 
ments in the art of acting, if they live at 
all as subjects of popular knowledge, must 
live as pictures in the memory. Dramatic 
names once illustrious have already become 



x ii PREFACE. 

shadows. In that respect theatrical reputa- 
tion certaifily is ephemeral. One of the 
characteristics of the present literary period, 
however, is its marked tendency toward modi- 
fying this evanescence of histriofiic repute, by 
making copious and minute memorials of the 
stage. The present writer, whose continual 
occupation it has been for the last twenty-five 
years to record, describe, and discuss the pro- 
fessional proceedings of actors, is aware of 
having steadily endeavoured to itnpart to his 
theatrical commentaries a warmth of sympa- 
thy, a?i earnestness of thought, and a fidelity 
of portraiture which eventually might make 
them helpful to augment, in the element of 
perpetuity, the fame of the actors portrayed. 
This purpose has been especially pursued by 
him in describing the dramatic performances 
given by Miss Mary Anderson, since she first 
appeared in the American capital, in 1877. 
l"he present volume, largely composed of his 
writings in the New York Tribune, care- 
fully revised, has grown out of the design 
thus indicated. Its publication at this time 
is made in practical response to the urgent 
request of many persons who are, naturally, 
interested in its subject ; and also it is made 
in the strong conviction that it is better to 



PREFACE. x iii 

place a wreath of roses on the living brow of 
genius and beauty than to cast a sad garland 
on their tomb. The author hopes that this book 
may be accepted as a useful contribution to the 
historical record of the contemporary stage; 
but also he desires that it may be viewed 
as an earnest and reverent testimonial, how- 
ever unworthy, to the lofty character and 
shining career of an extraordinary woman, 
who, blessed with great powers and auspi- 
cious opportunity, has used them for the ad- 
vancement of a great and noble art, and thus 
for the benefit of the world. 

W. W. 
Fort Hill, New Brighton, 

Staten Island, N. V., 
May 4, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

I. The Ladder of Fame i 

II. Rosalind at Stratford-on-Avon 77 

III. Rosalind in New York 99 

IV. Galatea and Clarice 117 

V. Pauline 129 

VI. Juliet 1 36 



THE LADDER OF FAME 

Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb 

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar ! 

— Beattie. 




jhose who greatly succeed in the 
conduct of life teach many val- 
uable lessons to others and give 
great happiness to the world. 
All cannot succeed. In the customary 
course of things many must fail. But to 
a just and sensitive mind the spectacle of a 
lofty, puissant character and a noble pros- 
perity is one of the incomparable comforts 
of human experience. Such a mind will 
find delight in dwelling upon this spectacle, 
will exult in it, and will extol it ; for the 
good reason that here is manifest a brilliant 
example, soothing and encouraging, of the 
capabilities inherent in human nature. A 



The beauty 
of true suc- 
cess. 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Motive of 
this book. 



Mary Ander- 
son born in 
California. 



Educated in 
Kentucky. 



great character greatly successful, shining 
in its righteous eminence and irradiating a 
beneficent grace, implies the divine element 
and the celestial future of mankind. Noth- 
ing can be more helpful to humanity than 
the contemplation of this kind of success. 
An impulse to celebrate such a character 
and to tell, in such detail as is permissible, 
the story of such a life, therefore explains 
itself, and surely it does not need the shield 
of apology. 

Mary Antoinette Anderson was born 
at Sacramento, California, on July 28, 1859. 
Her father, Charles Henry Anderson, was 
a native of New York; her mother, Marie 
Antoinette Leugers, was a native of Phila- 
delphia. Mary is the elder of two children 
born of this marriage, the younger being her 
brother, Charles Joseph Anderson, a native 
of Louisville, Kentucky, born January 28, 
1863. Her father died in 1863, aged 29, 
at Mobile, Alabama, and his ashes rest in 
the Magnolia Cemetery at that place. Her 
mother is now the wife of Dr. Hamilton 
Griffin, of Louisville, to whom she was 
married in 1867. Mary was taken to Louis- 
ville in the spring of i860, and in that 
city she passed her childhood and early 



MARY ANDERSON. ^ 

youth and received her education. She was 
for eighteen months a pupil at the Ursuline 
Convent there, and subsequently for three 
years and a half a pupil at the Presentation 
Academy, a Roman Catholic school, kept 
by nuns, adjacent to the cathedral. She 
was reared in the Roman Catholic faith, 
and, especially, she was fortunate in being 
instructed and trained by her mother's uncle, 
Father Anthony Miiller, a Franciscan priest, 
a thorough scholar, and a man equally re- 
markable for the originality and power of 
his intellect and the purity and benignity 
of his character. Her direct tuition, how- Brief eriod 
ever, was comprised within five years, and at school, 
it ended before she was quite fourteen years 
old. She was not in her girlhood an assidu- 
ous student, and, although since then her 
reading has been extensive, the observer 
of her public life must regard her not as a 
product of the schools but exclusively as a 
product of nature. Throughout her youth 
she was a dreamer, averse by the operation 
of her temperament to restraint and subjec- 
tion, averse also to companionship. " The 
thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
Much of the time during those early years 
was passed by her in solitary reverie and in 



4 MARY ANDERSON. 

Early pas- making pictures in the clouds. While yet a 

sionforthe child her fancy wag caught by the stagCj 

and from the first she manifested a passion- 
ate interest in everything relative to theatri- 
cal art. Sometimes she would be taken by 
her mother to see a play, and then she 
would act it over again at home; and in 
such repetitions she would manifest apt, 
interesting, and remarkable talent. She 
early evinced, also, a surprising taste and 
capacity for music. Several of the tragic 
impersonations of Edwin Booth were seen 
by her, and these exerted a powerful influ- 
ence upon her mind and feelings, strongly 
impelling her, indeed, to the choice of the 
stage for her own avocation. One of her 
of Edwin favourite books at that time was the " Life 
Booth. of Edwin Booth," — a narrative written by 

the author of the present biography, — em- 
bellished with portraits of the famous trage- 
dian, in character, by Hennessey. It was 
from Booth's acting and his artistic exam- 
ple, indeed, that she derived her first prac- 
tical perception of the high purpose and the 
opportunity of noble achievement that are 
possible to an actor; and it is significant 
that the dramatic parts first studied and 
learned by her — secretly and without advice 



MARY ANDERSON. 5 

or aid — were male characters, Hamlet, 
Wolsey, Richelieu, and Richard. She also 
learned Schiller's Joa?i of Arc. On the 
threshold of life, showing itself by these 
slight signs, her desire for dramatic ex- 
pression was seen to be the strongest im- 
pulse of her nature. It is the old story of J f mations 

r m J m of genius m 

genius denoting itself in the exalted reveries, childhood, 
the wayward impulses, the vague longings, 
and the strange moods of youth. Such 
signals are Nature's whispers of the bless- 
ing that she intends, and the guardians ot 
youth are wise who heed them. The talent 
revealed by this gifted girl, in the little dra- 
matic performances that she gave at home, 
was of such a significant character that 
soon it induced her parents to permit her 
training to take an artistic direction. She 
was instructed in English literature and in 
elocution by Professor Noble Butler, of 
Louisville ; she had the benefit of counsel 
from that great actress, Charlotte Cushman, First meet- 
whom she met for the first time in the l^T* 1 

Charlotte 

autumn of 1874, at Cincinnati, and who Cushman. 
advised her, considering personal qualifica- 
tions and the existent state of our stage, to 
begin at the top; and in the spring of 1875 
she received ten preparatory lessons in the 



MARY ANDERSON. 



She deter- 
mines to 
adopt the 
stage. 



Besieges a 

Western 

manager. 



art of acting from the veteran preceptor, 
Mr. George VandenhorT. This was all; and 
it will be observed that she had but little 
direct instruction bearing on the practice 
of the dramatic art. Natural capacity for 
dramatic expression, striving to obtain its 
freedom and to assert itself in fulfilment, 
was the impulsive force of her girlish mind ; 
and the only important guidance vouchsafed 
to her was the guidance of her own spirit. 
Such a spirit never strays nor swerves from 
its appointed path. She loved the art of 
acting, and she determined to become an 
actress. With this object in view she read 
every play that came within her reach, and 
committed to memory many of the leading 
characters in Shakespeare and in old stock 
pieces of the theatre. Thus equipped, — 
abundantly by nature but slenderly by cul- 
tivation, — she eagerly yet patiently sought 
the opportunity to make a first appearance 
on the stage. The manager of the chief 
theatre in Louisville was the late Mr. 
Barney Macauley (1837-1886), and to him 
her application for a chance to act was 
anxiously and persistently made — and long 
made in vain. At length, touched, no 
doubt, by her profound sincerity and by 



MARY ANDERSON. 5 

that winning charm of personality which 
has since made her beloved by the theatri- 
cal public in both hemispheres, this kind 
friend consented to open the way for her 
brave endeavour. A Saturday night was 
selected, — November 25, 1875, — and, an- 
nounced simply as " a young lady of Louis- 
ville," Mary Anderson, in the character of 
Juliet, made her dramatic advent. She had She makes 
just entered on her sixteenth year, but she er rst ap " 

J J 7 pearance as 

was tall and lithe in figure, her beautiful an actress, 
face was radiant with joy and hope, her 
voice, though untrained, possessed its grand 
volume of melodious power, and her physi- 
cal strength, even then, was extraordinary. 
Good judges of acting who saw that per- 
formance of Juliet said that, with all its 
violence and distortion, it was a wonderful 
display of natural talent. All her forces 

. . Excess of 

were in excess, but the excess was an over- forceSt 
flow of riches. From that night, through 
many vicissitudes and in despite of many 
obstacles, her career has been incessantly 
progressive and triumphant, till now she 
stands upon the summit of fame. 

Her first regular engagement, resultant 
on this auspicious endeavour, was played at 
the Louisville Theatre under Mr. Macauley's 



8 

Her first 
professional 
engagement, 
1876. 



Friendship 
of John Mc- 
Cullough. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

management, in the week beginning January 
20, 1876. She appeared as Evadne, Bianca, 
Julia, and Juliet. She had never seen either 
of these parts acted, excepting Juliet, and her 
embodiments of them were unconventional 
and novel. Theatrical managers throughout 
the Republic, hearing of these performances, 
soon began to manifest a practical interest 
in her work. She visited in rapid succession 
many of the large cities of the South. In 
March, 1876, she made a bright mark at St. 
Louis and New Orleans, and a little later, 
under the management of the veteran direc- 
tor, Mr. John T. Ford,— one of the ablest, 
and long one of the most distinguished 
leaders of the theatre in America, — she 
made her first visit to Washington, and 
quite conquered the chivalry of the capital. 
Her girlish aspiration and fine audacity of 
effort had early won the friendly sympathy 
of John McCullough — that noble gentle- 
man and superb heroic actor, whose great 
heart, now lamentably stilled in death, was 
ever rejoiced to recognize and foster am- 
bitious worth ! — and soon she made a visit 
to San Francisco, to act at the California 
Theatre, of which he was then the manager. 
There, for the first time, and at McCullough's 



MARY ANDERSON. 



suggestion, she appeared as Parthenia, in 
" Ingomar," a character in which she has 
since gained many brilliant victories. This 
period of her life was not unmarked by- 
vicissitudes, pain alternating with pleasure, 
and disappointment with success. The 
young actress found friends and favour; but 
likewise she obtained her wholesome ex- 
perience of hardship and of salutary mental 
and spiritual discontent. 

Miss Anderson made her first appear- 
ance on the New York stage on November 
12, 1877, two years after her debut at Louis- 
ville. In the meantime she had been in 
almost continual practice, and she had 
gained auspicious reputation. A beautiful 
and happy girl, she came to the capital 
heralded by hopeful promise. Youth, beauty, 
natural aptitude for dramatic art, and a 
certain proficiency acquired in professional 
experience, which though brief had been 
useful, were known to be her qualifica- 
tions. She did not disappoint augury. On 
the contrary, her uncommon talents made 
an immediate impression. Yet at the outset 
of Miss Anderson's conquest of the Ameri- 
can theatre her popularity was due in a 
great measure to her condition of physical 



Her first ap- 
pearance as 
Parthenia. 



Her advent 
in New York 
as Pauline. 



Cause of her 

immediate 

popularity. 



MARY ANDERSON. 



1877. 
Dec. 14. 



The writer's 
first impres- 
sions of her 
genius. 



bloom and personal worth. She appeared 
at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, as Pauline, 
in " The Lady of Lyons," following, in this 
respect, the time-honoured example of Mrs. 
Mowatt. She acted there till December 
21, and she impersonated in succession 
Pauline, Juliet, Evadne, Meg Merrilies, and 
Parthenia. She also played Lady Macbeth, 
in the sleep scene. From this point 
onward, through a period of nine years, her 
professional deeds are recorded, and her 
artistic progress is traced, in my contempo- 
raneous journal of her public life. 

Miss Anderson is a refreshment to the 
theatre, and she comes upon this tired 
period like a strain of rich music in the 
middle of the night. It is long since the 
stage has made such an acquisition. She 
may not be able to act this part well, or 
that part completely, or the other part at 
all; but she is an actress by nature. In 
almost all human beings there is a desire 
for dramatic expression : it is an instinct of 
the general heart : in this remarkable woman 
the faculty is united with the desire, and 
both are invested with adequate organs and 
physical beauty. Miss Anderson is an in- 
terpreter. Whether her mind can grasp with 



MARY ANDERSON. IX 

intuitive sympathy and knowledge the 
elemental experiences of humanity is a 
question that she herself, in time, will 
answer. The examination, meanwhile, of 
particular performances by one so young 
in art is mostly a barren labour. Mental 
discipline and artistic method may be 
taught, but education cannot give magnetic 
fire and personal charm. There are gifts 
that come from the schools ; there are others 
that come from heaven. Certain human 
beings, fortunate and rare, arise now and 
then in the world, accredited with the power 
and the nameless grace to move and to 
charm. They take a place of gentle sov- 
ereignty, not by virtue of their deeds but by 
virtue of their existence. They are made influence of 
potential to help the human race by a ™ dlvldual 

1 x m J charm in 

power which is above earthly influence and rare persons, 
independent of human caprice. And they 
do help it, — by filling its senses and suffu- 
sing its heart with beauty; by the spon- 
taneous and involuntary suggestion of its 
divine possibilities, and by the elevation of 
its soul. Miss Anderson is one of these 
fortunate persons; and that fact is more 
important to the profession which she has 
adopted, and to her own future in that 



12 



MARY ANDERSON. 



is less im- 
portant. 



Mechanism profession, than the question whether she 
now acts a particular part well or ill. 
Technical accuracy in acting, although a 
merit, is not in a large sense important 
to the world; and the public analysis of it 
often seems a superfluous discussion of 
trifles. But lovely personality and enno- 
bling spirit, on the stage as elsewhere, is a 
blessing to be welcomed and cherished. 
Miss Anderson is young, healthful, hand- 
some, artless, remarkable for pomp of 
figure and music of voice, singular in her 
large, sumptuous, natural action, and fas- 
cinating with mysterious charm. As an 
actress she has much to learn. As a 
woman, — 

" Of Nature's gifts she may with lilies boast, 
And with the half-blown rose." 



She plays 
Bianco, in 
" Fazio." 



On December 17 Milman's tragedy of 
" Fazio" was presented, and Miss Anderson 
played Bianca. Her performance had mo- 
ments of thrilling force and moments of 
lovely gentleness ; but these were personal 
to the actress rather than the character, 
denotements of herself rather than traits of 
an assumed identity. The simulation of 
love was frigid, and therefore the subse- 



MARY ANDERSON. 13 

quent simulation of jealousy was deprived 
of its full effect. In the bleak and lonely- 
night scene there was no desolation such as 
always bitterly enwraps the solitary mo- 
ments of jealous love. It was not until the 
death scene that the actress struck a note 
of deep pathos. Here the condition of 
Bianca touched her heart, and she spoke 
and acted with forlorn tenderness. 

On December 21, as a supplement to Her first 
Parthenia. Miss Anderson presented Lady Ne wYork 
Macbeth, in the sleep scene. Her per- Lady Mac- 
formance was based on that of Charlotte beth - 
Cushman. Nervous and a little flurried, it 
nevertheless was good. Her demeanour and 
attitude had a certain massive grandeur, 
and they were entirely consonant with the 
awful isolation of human misery which is 
the spirit of the scene. Her voice, in the 
rich variety of cadence that broke and 
dispelled its characteristic monotone, de- 
noted, if not the irremediable agony of a 
conscience-stricken, heart-broken, hopeless 
criminal, at least such perception of the 
awful reality of sorrow as awoke the earnest 
response of sympathy and grief. It would 
not be easy for even the most sensitive and 
experienced actress to throw herself at once 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Imitative but 
powerful. 



1878. 



Makes her 
first visit to 
Europe, and 
goes to the 
home of 
Shakespeare. 



into the piteous anguish and remorse with 
which the sleep scene of Lady Macbeth 
is surcharged. The highest and the best- 
trained capacity could not, in this character, 
surpass what has already been accomplished. 
The work was uncertain and it was imita- 
tive, but it was full of imagination and 
power. Miss Anderson might not enact 
Lady Macbeth adequately throughout ; but 
her acting, in this portion of it, gave yet 
another clear and cogent indication of latent 
intensity and rich resource. The dressing 
was simple and pictorial : a white robe, with 
a straggling tress of chestnut hair escaping 
through the folds of the head-gear. 

At the Boston Theatre, on May 22," The 
Lady of Lyons" was acted, for a benefit, 
with John McCullough as Claude Melnotte 
and Miss Anderson as Pauline. On May 
29 she sailed from New York for Liverpool, 
making her first visit to Europe, and about 
the middle of July she passed some happy 
days at Stratford-on-Avon. Later in the 
summer she returned home, and on August 
29, when the Fifth Avenue Theatre was re- 
opened, she appeared there as Parthenia — 
a numerous and refined company greeting 
her with joyous welcome. 



MARY ANDERSON. ^ 

Miss Anderson's impersonation of Par- August 30. 
thenia has the attributes of youth, beauty, 
innocence, ingenuousness, the warmth of 
girlish emotion, the prettiness of girlish 
caprice, the dignity of innate goodness, and 
the consistency of spontaneous identifica- 
tion. The part, as an ideal, has presented 
no serious obstacle to the smooth and easy 
flow of the artist's mind and feelings. Miss 
Anderson becomes Parthenia by natural 
sympathy. The simple truthfulness, the Gives a char- 
unconscious capacity of heroism, and the acteristicper- 
winning loveliness of this classic maiden ° rmanceo . 
of poetry are in the spirit of the woman of "ingomar." 
actual life. The glow of artistic instinct 
gives them vitality, and dramatic skill gives 
them expression. In the ideal that Miss 
Anderson embodied — in the nature, the 
person that she developed — there was not 
a flaw. The actress of fact was the Par- Actress and 

character 

thenia of fiction — a creature as bright and matched, 
sweet as the dew that sparkles upon the roses 
of a morning in June. The substance of 
Parthenia is readily within Miss Anderson's 
grasp ; the form sometimes eludes her. The 
defects of the performance are in its expres- 
sion. There is a lack of repose in the 
attitudes, and of clear utterance and just 



i6 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Promise 
more import- 
ant here than 
performance. 



Futility of 
discussing 
technicalities 



emphasis in the enunciation. This state- 
ment glances at blemishes needful to be 
indicated and destined to be removed. Re- 
specting the mind of this actress it may be 
said — in the words of Desde?no?ia — " it yet 
hath felt no age nor known no sorrow." She 
is still on the threshold of her career, and 
many bright hopes span with their bow of 
promise the heaven of her future life. This 
it is which makes her present efforts excep- 
tionally interesting. This it is which in- 
clines the observant thought to dwell more 
upon the general character and tendency 
of her powers than upon the details of her 
professional mechanism. These technicali- 
ties, indeed, are at all times cumbersome 
and tedious. It cannot edify a reader to 
learn that Smith was fine as Jawkins, and 
Miss Jones exquisite as Lady Grace, but 
that Green should have powdered his whis- 
kers, and Tomkins should have left off his 
spurs. There are hints of inexperience in 
Miss Anderson's acting; but now it is a 
much more considerable fact that the young 
actress is certainly endowed with a genuine 
capacity of dramatic expression and with 
powers and graces that enable her to gratify 



MARY ANDERSON. I7 

and benefit her generation in advancing the 
best interests of the stage. 

On September 5 Miss Anderson played 
Julia for the first time in New York, and f e 7 play ' 

7 Julia and 

on September 19 she appeared as Juliet. Juliet. 
In this character, to which she has given 
incessant study, her advancement now 
marks a signal artistic growth. The im- 
pression she then imparted was slight. 

Miss Anderson is so beautiful in Juliet Sept. 20. 
that she defeats judgment. It is impossible, 
looking upon that sweet young face, to 
think clearly of the defects of her acting. 
Where emotion is assumed but is not felt, 
the exhibition of it will be intermittent. 
Miss Anderson's Juliet is no more of one 
piece, viewed as an ideal, than her execution 
is of one piece, viewed as mechanism. In 
the balcony scene much is said of love, but 
love is not felt. The pretty action with Artificial 
the flower, at the close, is artificial. There <i ualit y of 



5 

;nt in Miss Anderson's nature — Ju i iet 
and it is apparent in her voice — which 
debars her at present from this feeling. She 
toils toward it through the mind ; she does 
not reach it with the heart. The same was 
true, in other years, of Miss Kate Bateman. 



!8 MARY ANDERSON. 

The grace, the sweetness, the arch ways, 
and the childish tones in Miss Ander- 
son's personation are delicious. In the 
potion scene she makes a superb effect. 
Her imagination kindles to single passages ; 
her faculties rally to isolated and often 
superb bits of effect. The human touch 
of relenting affection, at parting with the 
Nurse, is one of these. The taking of the 
drug is another — with all the action that 
follows it. But in the scene of Juliefs re- 
ception of the news of TybaWs death and 
Ronierfs banishment, a condition that exacts 
tremendous passion and sustained agony, 
the actress is inadequate. Her execution of 
Juliet is like her ideal. Her voice passes 
from a sweet, low tone to a sudden clarion. 
Thinking of Miss Anderson's Juliet one 
Defects and thinks of the snow made vital and passion- 

ments alike . 

remarkable, ate ; of childhood transfigured into maturity ; 
of white roses trying to blush. It is a per- 
formance full of splendid faults — full, like- 
wise, of splendid virtues and golden promise. 
But this gifted and lovely woman has to 
learn more of life before she will satisfy her- 
self in Shakespeare's Juliet. 

Sept 23. No one can see Miss Anderson act with- 

out perceiving the good and tender heart, 



MARY ANDERSON. !q 

the bright intelligence, the moral dignity, 
the splendid natural capacity for dramatic 
expression, and the superb physical adapta- impression 
bility to the dramatic art which are her ofma s nifi - 

J cent personal 

attributes. Such a presence for the lofty, qualities, 
statuesque, passionate heroines of the classic 
drama has not come upon the stage for 
many years. Such a voice — notwithstand- 
ing, for lack of suitable culture, that its 
registers are not yet perfectly blended — 
has seldom been heard. The generation 
that welcomed Ellen Tree would have 
known how to welcome Mary Anderson — 
and would not have paused to count and 
curb its heart-beats of delighted exultation 
in such genius and beauty. She is not, as 
to art, a prodigy ; but she is, as to nature, — 
the spirit no less than the sense, the soul 
equally with the body, — a creature so 
gloriously endowed that nothing should be 
impossible to her in the pursuit which she 
has chosen. Her Evadne is perhaps the 
most eloquent of the manifestations which 
at present justify this judgment. All persons Her success 
who are acquainted with stage matters know in Evadne. 
that this part reaches to heights of frenzied 
anguish and to depths of pathetic despair, 
and that it involves conditions of moral 



2 o MARY ANDERSON. 

sublimity such as provide excellent dramatic 
opportunities. It is pervaded, too, by pure 
and sacred womanhood. It lacks unity — 
because the author of it has enforced tran- 
sitions which are impossible to human 
nature. But it contains rare tragic passion. 
Miss Anderson acted, in Evadne's parting 
with Vicentio, with a pathos that was perfect. 

Recalls Julia g mce ^q ^ est ^ays Q f T u li a Dean SUCh SL 
Dean at her . . 

best symmetrical, passionate, lovely portrayal of 

Evadne's heroism, in the statue scene, has 
not been given on our stage. 

Sept. 28. Bianca is a virtuous, tender, gentle, but 

passionate woman, who, becoming mad- 
dened by jealousy — for which she has good 
cause — betrays her husband to death; and, 
thereupon, realizing what she has done, 
lapses into frenzy and dies in piteous dejec- 
tion, after a paroxysm of agony. This ideal 
is not difficult to grasp, but it is immensely 
difficult to express. When Miss Anderson 
first appeared as Bianca her performance of 
it was little more than experimental : it was 
deficient in deep feeling, unity, and sym- 
metrical form. The personation of it that 
she now gives, on the contrary, reveals 

The imper- g raS p f the subject, intelligent purpose, 

proved. thoughtful design, and passion. The shafts 



again. 



MARY ANDERSON. 21 

of feeling are not, indeed, as deeply sunk as 
they will be hereafter ; the skill in sculpture, 
tone, and tint is not as deft as it must one 
day become; but the improved faculty is 
obvious, and the growth is seen to be in the 
right direction. An effort was made — and 
made with just instinct and uncommon 
force — to deepen the colour of the fore- 
ground of domestic love. The suggestion 
of Bianca's deep and wildly passionate 
nature — as denoted at the moment when 
she divines that Fazio has seen her rival — 
was made with sumptuous warmth and 
with a struggling, reckless agitation that 
were properly and fearfully ominous. The Shows 
subsequent delirium was singularly well £™ wthin 
indicated, often reached, and to some of power, 
extent sustained. The test thus met is 
severe; for, at a certain point Bianca is 
loosed from all moorings and dashed upon 
the wild billows of stormy anguish. At 
points, though, it was impossible not to see 
looseness of method — as though the will 
were outstripped by the impulse. This is 
right as to feeling; but expression always 
deepens the sincerity and effect of feeling 
when it controls its means. The third act 
became turbulent for lack of this controlling 



22 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Excess and 
dispropor- 
tion. 



Effective 
pathos. 



Auspicious 
indications 
of her acting. 



reserve and direction of resources. These 
resources, however, were felt to be luxuriant. 
The result of the treatment they received in 
Miss Anderson's affluent method was to 
make her Bianca, in execution, an alterna- 
tion of tremendous outbursts with sudden 
and surprising calms; strange peals of 
melodious vocal thunder, with shrill cries, 
and with tones as soft as the echo of the 
prayer of childhood. Through these, not the 
less, the actress exhibited a deep percep- 
tion of the dreadful and deadly experience 
of Bianca. The allusions to the children 
were made in a spirit especially illuminative 
of a clear and right ideal. The supplica- 
tion to Aldabella was beautifully uttered, 
and so as to carry a convincing weight of 
significance. The breaking of the voice 
was irresistible. The previous lines, in 
parting with Fazio, — " There must be, in 
this wide city," etc., — were uttered with all 
the meaning that underlies this agonized 
scene; and they never could have been 
uttered better. There is room for pro- 
founder passion and for delicate touches of 
suggested sentiment; but the embodiment 
is fraught with power, and it shows a steady 
advance — from which those who are in- 



MARY ANDERSON. 



23 



terested in the growth of tragic art may 
derive happy auguries of the future of one 
of the few players of whom there is reason 
to be proud in the present period of the 
American stage. 

The season of 1878-79 was closed with 1879. 
performances at Syracuse and Boston, May 
22 and 24, and Miss Anderson passed 
the summer of 1879 at Long Branch. In 
June of that year she gave performances 
at the Leland Opera House, Albany, in 
association with John McCullough; and 
there, on June 20, her brother, Mr. Joseph ? 6but of 

, . J os - Ander- 

Anderson, made his first appearance on the son. 
stage, acting Stephen in "The Hunchback." 
On September 9 she began a new season, 
appearing first at Utica and thence travel- 
ling through Canada and into the West and 
South, and thus filling up x the year. 

To speak of Miss Mary Anderson is to August 22. 
name the hope of the American stage. No 
beginner of late years has given promise of 
such excellence or has done so much in The remark - 

. able promise 

actual performance; and there is no young of her career, 
artist before the public for whom the future 
seems so bright. Youth, beauty, sweetness, 
power, the dramatic temperament, real and 
rare talents, an honest ambition, a modest 



/ 



24 MARY ANDERSON. 

spirit, and high principles unite in this lady 
and " speak her full of grace." Miss An- 
derson has added to her repertory the 
Adopts new P art °*" Th g Countess in Sheridan Knowles's 
characters, play of " Love ; or, the Countess and the 
Serf," — a piece that has been for a time dis- 
used. Several brilliant names in American 
stage history are associated with this strong 
character — the most famous being that 
of Mrs. Shaw (Elisa Marian Trewar), who 
acted it with the brilliant Tom Hamblin 
(1800-1853,) as Huon. 

Another new part that she adopted and 
played, this year, was the Duchess de Tor- 
renueva in Planche's fine comedy of " Faint 
Heart Never Won Fair Lady." This im- 
personation she first gave at St. Louis, and 
subsequently repeated at Brooklyn, and it 
was recorded as a sprightly and dashing 
effort in a new field. 
Z 88o. Recognition of the increasing merit of 

Miss Anderson's dramatic performances is 
more and more frequently observed in the 
American press as this year advances. She 
continued to act until May 8, when she 
ended her season at Portland, Maine, hav- 
ing given two hundred and thirty-eight per- 
formances.. The summer was passed at Long 



MARY ANDERSON. 



25 



Branch. She resumed the active work of Enacts ion 
her profession on September 13 at Oswego. ^ hefirst 
In the interval she had been studying Ion, 
and this part she acted for the first time 
in her life, on October 30, 1880, at the 
Opera House in Detroit. 

Acting poetic parts is writing poetry in March 21. 
the air. An actor, with motion, face, and 
voice, is just as much bound by the laws of 
form as a poet is who works with written 
words. Those writers who break away 
from form do so not on account of their 
strength but on account of their weakness. 
It is more difficult for the poet to sustain 
the flowing tide of his emotion and his 
thought in, for example, the great Spen- Acquiring 
serean stanza, than it would be for him to command of 
write the loose hexameters of a Tupper, or the impl . e " 

rr ' ments of 

the melodious memoranda of a Walt Whit- form, 
man, or the intoned, chanting sentences of 
an Ossian. So with the actor. It is more 
difficult fully to assume and evenly to sus- 
tain an ideal individuality than it is to make 
that individuality the pretext for a loose- 
jointed, rambling, hap-hazard exhibition of 
self and of the impulses and feelings of the Kindred 
moment. And just as the poet must always 
find himself fettered and curbed until he has poet. 
3 



methods of 
actor and 



26 



Necessity of 
vital experi- 
ence. 



General 
characteris- 
tics of her 
acting. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

acquired such a mastery of form that the 
strong and free use of it is entirely natural 
and easy, so the actor [who deals with the 
same subjects, and, in a kindred way, bears 
testimony also to the power and effect of 
the great passions of human nature and the 
influences of beauty in the universe] can- 
not be free until experience has made the 
use of form a second nature. That result 
comes slowly. It develops from within. It 
flows out of the action of the feelings of the 
soul. It is the sequence of vital thought 
and passion, acting upon the artistic tem- 
perament. Of actors no less than of poets 
it is profoundly true that they must " learn 
in suffering what they teach in song" — and 
that which teaches them the lesson of life 
will, at the same time, teach them how to 
convey it. " At last," says Wilhelm Meister, 
" after great preparations, he disclosed to 
me that true experience is just precisely 
when one experiences what an experienced 
man must experience in experiencing his 
experience." 

The impersonations which have been 
given by Miss Anderson have covered a 
broad area of human nature transfigured 
into poetic ideals. She has enacted Evadne, 



MARY ANDERSON. 2 J 

Parthenia, Julia, Juliet, Meg Merrilies, Paul- 
ine, and The Countess. It is only technical 
criticism — useful but tedious, and always a 
second-class pursuit — which would concern 
itself with her specific method of treating 
these parts, in detail. The vital point is the 
consideration of her advancement. She is 
an undeveloped genius and is destined to 
a great future on the stage. Her loveliness 
alone will carry her far in the public estima- 
tion. It is singular and instructive to remark 
with what a gradual movement her mind 
progresses. 

The most exacting part which has been 
mentioned is Juliet ; and in her acting of 
this Miss Anderson denotes that the level 
she has now reached is but slightly removed 
above that on which she stood a year ago. 
Now, as then, during the first half of the Deficienc y 

' a of passion 

tragedy she is the embodied spirit of the injuiiet 
white lily — the soul of the eidelweiss, that 
grows among the eternal snows of the Alps. 
Her Juliet no more loves Romeo than the 
stars of Orion love the icebergs of the Polar 
Sea. It is a lovely girl playing at love — 
and playing in perfect safety. No observer, 
however sympathetic, can feel, either with 
tenderness or dread, the actual presence of 



2 8 MARY ANDERSON. 

that tremendous and deadly passion. This 
is because the artist is imitating something 
of which her nature has not taken absolute 
cognisance, and which intuition will not 
She is supe- se i ze# Every other passion can better be 

nor in tragic # J ^ r 

emotion. imitated, even by inexperience, than the 
passion of love. Through all the later 
scenes of the tragedy, which are domi- 
nated by tragic action, Miss Anderson 
moves with splendid power, like one set 
free to be herself. She is then a woman 
in a tempest of passionate anguish, uttering 
her heart with unrestrained freedom and 
force. 

Observation of other impersonations con- 
firms the impression derived from this one. 
Miss Anderson is doing all that can be done 
to make artistic treatment supply the lack 
of that pervasive spontaneity which is at once 

heTdevefo^ ^e consequence and the sign of inspiration. 

ment. Her works are growing in symmetry — but 

neither in unity nor in splendour. She still 
wins as a beauty, impresses as a prodigy, 
and startles as a genius. The word has not 
yet been spoken which is to give her soul 
its entire freedom, arm it with all its powers, 
and make the forms of art the slaves of her 
will. The triumph of Miss Anderson now 



MARY ANDERSON. 



2 9 



is the triumph of an exceptional personality- 
shrined in a beautiful person, but not yet 
the triumph of a consummate actress. With merits^d 
a superb voice, here is a defective elocution ; defects. 
with a magnificent figure, here is a self-con- 
scious manner in the attitudes ; with a noble 
freedom and suppleness of physical machin- 
ery, here is a capricious gesticulation ; with 
a full and fine sense of opportunity for strong 
and shining points, here is but an incipient 
perception of the relative value of surrounding 
characters and the coordination of adjuncts ; 
with a brilliant faculty for stormy and ve- 
hement declamation, here, as yet, is an 
imperfect idea of the loveliness of quiet 
touches, verbal shading, and suggestive 
strokes ; with a vigorous, and often grand, 
manner of address, here is a frequent lack 
of concentration in listening ; with wonder- 
ful intuitions as to the wilder moods of 
human passion, here is a restricted sym- 
pathy with the more elemental feelings — 
from which naturally ensues a certain 
vagueness in the effect of their manifesta- 
tion. Here, in brief, is more tragic impulse 
than human tenderness ; more of physical 
strength and force of will than of spiritual 
intensity; more of the ravishing opulence 



3Q 

Herastonish- 
ing natural 
powers. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

of youthful womanhood than of the thrill- 
ing frenzy of genius or the dominant 
grandeur of intellectual character. Yet, 
what a wealth of natural power is here ! 
what glorious promise ! what splendid pos- 
sibilities! Of just such a nature, surely, was 
spoken the beautiful prophecy of Words- 
worth : 

The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her; for her the willow bend; 
Nor shall she fail to see, 
Even in the motions of the storm, 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 
By silent sympathy. 

The stars of midnight shall be dear 

To her; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 

Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 

And beauty born of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 



Reentrance 
in New York. 



On December 13 Miss Anderson reap- 
peared in New York, at the Fifth Avenue 
Theatre, as Evadne, and was cordially wel- 
comed. She afterwards played Parthe7iia, 
and, on December 20 for the first time in 
that city, The Countess, in " Love." She 
also repeated Julia > Bianca, and Pauline. 
The novel feature of the engagement was 



MARY ANDERSON. 



31 



" Ion." The artistic result of her labours in 
1880 is indicated in what follows. 

A revival of Milman's tragedy of" Fazio " Dec. 28. 
has presented Miss Anderson in the most 
difficult character she has undertaken, and 
has enabled her, in a powerful and affecting Her surpris- 
embodiment of Bianca, to show forth not l ^ B ^^m 
alone her brilliant natural faculties and for- "Fazio." 
tunate graces of mind and person, but her 
remarkable advancement in dramatic art. 
The character of Bianca has not the intel- 
lect of Lady Macbeth, and nowhere does it 
rise to the awful altitude of the two or three 
moments of hopeless and terrible remorse 
in which that royal murderer is transfigured 
into an image of immortal anguish. But 
Bia?ica?s tender, womanlike nature is crazed 
by a terrible conflict of passion, and the sit- ^J^° f 
uations in which she is displayed are such nature, 
as make a steady, ever-increasing drain 
upon her forces, alike of suffering and ex- 
pression, and therefore the part, though 
easier to reach, is more difficult to sustain. 

Miss Anderson began with sunshine, mak- 
ing visible the profound earnestness, ardour, 
and passionate intensity of Bianca's tem- 
perament, and thus showing her to be 
capable of the madness presently to come, 



32 



Proportion 
and symme- 
try of her 
Bia?ica. 



Extraordi- 
nary effects 
of pathos. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

but giving no prefiguration of the latent 
tragedy of her life. This may be called a 
use of tone and colour, and certainly it was 
directed with a subtle instinct. All the 
foreground of the picture was warm with 
an atmosphere of domestic love — with the 
content, the trust, and the hopeful, eager 
enjoyment of the fireside of home; and 
through it all ran a faint, tremulous agita- 
tion which without being prophetic was in 
a certain strange way ominous. The key- 
note of this work is struck when Bianca 
says, " Fazio, thou hast seen Aldabella " ; 
this point Miss Anderson made with a sup- 
pressed passion, apprehensive and vengeful, 
which was true to nature and finely effective 
in art. The cold, metallic tones of settled 
misery in which the denunciation of Fazio 
was uttered were deeply eloquent as to what 
was in the soul of the actress, besides being 
exactly right as a vehicle for the feeling of 
that crisis. The allusions to the children 
and the adjuration to the scornful Aldabella 
were as tender as infancy and as touching 
as pathos could make them. No listener 
could doubt that the actress had, through 
the sympathetic exercise of the imagination, 
grasped a full sense of Bianca } s trials and 



MARY ANDERSON. 



33 



condition and projected her spirit into a 
consonant misery. The capacity to do this 
is the main thing, because it is the gift of 
nature, the illumination that the soul derives 
from the spiritual forces within and around 
it. The government of the mechanism by 
which this capacity is used, being a matter 
of taste and will, can be cultivated and is 
susceptible of endless improvement. All 
of Miss Anderson's recent performances 
have indicated that this is the direction of 
her study, effort, and self-discipline. 

If experience could be acquired by im- 
mediate application of the precepts of which 
it is so liberal, perfection would be gained ^^^ 
in a moment, and life would be exhausted ence. 
on the threshold of maturity. Miss Ander- 
son's experience is to be gained, as others 
have gained it, through living, striving, and 
suffering, and not through experimenting 
on the ideas of other persons. It is impos- 
sible that her works should have, at present, 
the solidity, the splendour, the satisfying 
fulness of knowledge and emotion which 
appertain to riper years. For an actress who 
has only been five seasons on the stage, she Need of dis- 
. has already achieved results that are almost cr j minatin f 

J critical judg- 

without a parallel in the history of acting, ment. 
3* 



The nature 



34 



MARY ANDERSON. 

To censure, for not doing more, an actress 
who has already done so much, would be 
folly as well as injustice. The public has 
great reason to be satisfied that this young 
and beautiful woman, so richly endowed, so 
capable, and so earnest, is here to grace the 
stage, and, in representations that are as 
sweet, pure, and high, and well-nigh as skil- 
ful as the best that have been seen, to exert 
upon the popular heart the old immortal 
charm of sculpture, eloquence, and poetry. 
She had in the copious applause of a great 

Re ™ ark ^ le throng of spectators, in several recalls upon 

to the actress, the stage, in the significant hush of deep 
emotion that often pervaded the house, and 
in the tears that trembled in many eyes, a 
whole-hearted tribute of sympathetic recog- 
nition. It was a splendid revelation of a 
woman's heart and a noble effort in acting, 
and it justifies the most eager anticipation. 

January i. Miss Anderson chose wisely when she 

chose, as an addition to her repertory, the 

Excellent as character of The Countess, in Knowles's 

TkeCountess • . 

in "Love." comedy of " Love. It suits well with her 
statue-like, innocent, stately beauty, and it 
finds a sympathetic response alike in the 
intellectual coldness, the inherent gentle- 
ness, the native, woman-like pride, and the 



MARY ANDERSON. 25 

deep, passionate sincerity which have been 
discerned, through her acting, to be the 
prominent qualities of her temperament. 
It suits with her style of art, likewise, in 
the fortunate sequence of moods through 
which it enables her to pass — beginning in 
haughty, calm, self-imposed restraint, and 
passing through affected scorn, royal pride, 
and melting tenderness sternly held in 
check, till at last it culminates in the con- 
quest of the affections over the will. Miss 
Anderson shows that she has grasped this peculiar 
ideal in its breadth and delicacy; and her beauties of 

. , , , the perform- 

execution of it was remarkable for spon- ^^ 
taneous grace and adequate power. The 
suggestive by-play, in the first scene with 
Huon, — showing love's resentment against 
itself and its object, in a proud heart, — was 
alike beautiful in fineness of tracery and 
pathetic in repressed emotion. The hys- 
terical recovery after the tumult of grief, in 
the scene of the storm, carried the same 
conflict of feelings to an impressive height. 
There is a still more touching effect, pro- 
duced in the silent observance of Huon 
after his refusal to obey The Duke, wherein 
the actress, with a fine intuition, lets her „ 

' ' Nature in 

soul shine through her eyes and makes no acting. 



3^ 



Powerful at 
the climax. 



January 4. 



"Ion." 
Record of its 
several pro- 
ductions. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

effort to act. The application of the " nat- 
ural " method has sometimes led Miss 
Anderson almost to the needless extreme 
of tameness ; in this instance it leads her 
to an effect of nature that could not be 
excelled in sweetness or artistic propriety. 
To introduce, whether by facial expression 
or a pause of significance, the illuminative 
idea of the plan which had flashed upon the 
mind of The Countess, when she bids Huon 
sign the paper, would heighten the dramatic 
interest of the moment and help the strong 
climax which follows. That climax, the 
mountain-peak of the comedy, is reached 
at the passionate cry of The Countess, com- 
manding her servitors to bring back the 
fugitive Huon. Miss Anderson reached 
this a little too suddenly, but she gave it 
with a clarion call of anguish and with 
splendid energy. In roundness of outline, 
in blending of all its parts, in truth of ideal, 
and in smoothness of execution, this is one 
of her best works. 

The tragedy of " Ion " has been presented 
at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and Miss An- 
derson has enacted Ion, for the first time in 
New York. This beautiful play dates back 
to May 26, 1836, when it was brought out 



MARY ANDERSON. 37 

in London, at Covent Garden, with Macready 
as Ion. Bulwer said that Macready invested 
the self-sacrifice of Ion " with exquisite 
sweetness and dignity and pathos." The 
tragedy was first acted in America at the 
old National Theatre, in New York, De- 
cember 14, 1836, with George Jones, the 
late Count Joannes, as Ion, and Mr. Pick- 
ering as Adrastus. On February 2, 1837, 
it was presented at the old Park Theatre, 
with Ellen Tree as Ion, Fredericks as Adras- 
tus, Wheatley as Phocion, Richings as Ctesi- 
phon, and Mrs. Gurner as Clemanthe. In 
the fall of 1852, at the old Broadway, Mrs. 
Mowatt acted Ion. Mr. Wallack revived 
the play at his theatre, in later days, and 
John Dyott won distinction as Adrastus. 
Miss Anderson reproduces it, cast as follows : Miss Ander- 

Ion Mar y Anderson. ^tadon 

Adrastus Milnes Levick. of « Ion » ^ 

Medon H. B. Norman. New York. 

Agenor John McDonald. 

Timocles T. F. Brennan. 

Cleon J. Currier. 

Phocion Atkins Lawrence. 

Ctesiphon R. L. Downing. 

Crythes T. L. Coleman. 

Cassander Joseph Anderson. 

Clemanthe Emma Maddern. 

Irus , Laura Clancy. 

Abra Mrs. Benton. 



38 



"Ion," "ca- 
viare to the 
general." 



Nature of 
popularity. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

It is not difficult to understand why the 
tragedy of " Ion " has seldom been acted, 
or why its hold upon the stage remains 
slight and uncertain. It is deficient in fem- 
inine interest; its vitality is of the spirit 
rather than the blood ; its lofty moral feel- 
ing is somewhat far removed from general 
human sympathy; its poetry, though elo- 
quent, is of the kind that is impelled by a 
scholastic mental purpose rather than the 
warm, spontaneous currents of the heart; it 
is suffused with a cold, white light rather 
than with colour; its persons are more the 
representatives of abstract ideas and artistic 
purposes than living human beings ; and its 
central character, Ion, is so absolutely sex- 
less, that it makes no difference whether it 
be personated by a man or a woman. Alto- 
gether it is an ideal creation ; and, as such, 
it exacts an ideal sympathy, of which man- 
kind is but slenderly capable. If ever 
the time should come when Shelley is as 
popular as Robert Burns, or Shakespeare's 
" Tempest " pleases the multitude as deeply 
as " The Lady of Lyons," then Talfourd's 
tragedy of " Ion " will be as famous and as 
much admired on the stage as it is now in 
the closet. 



MARY ANDERSON. 39 

The revival of " Ion " from time to time 
is not the less a desirable, admirable, and 
useful achievement. It is a piece that is 
fruitful of excellent lessons. It shows with 
conspicuous clearness that simple, severe th e e a " ra g S e d 
beauty of form in works of art which the of "ion." 
ancient Greeks were the first to attain and 
to teach. It uses the noble English tongue 
with a copious affluence of wealth and 
melody such as is rarely found outside of 
Shakespeare, and such as lulls the sense of 
harmony into a dream of delight. It de- 
picts — in its incidents, its accessories, and 
its suggested traits of ancient civilization — 
an old, far-distant historic period, thickly 
peopled with majestic shapes and great 
ideas, and dimly invested with that air of 
shadowy mystery which is so captivating to atmosTere 
the imagination and so elevating to the Moral purity, 
spiritual nature of man. It is instinct with 
moral purity, and therein it streams upon 
the soul like sunrise on the ocean — a 
glory, a comfort, and a charm. Its stage 
pictures please by the propriety of their nat- 
ural sequence, by the spirited character of 
their groupings, and by the sharp, clear, Fine stage 
and steadily increasing effect which they p icturesan <i 

J . ° J intellectual 

give to the dramatic purpose of the piece, force. 



40 MARY ANDERSON. 

Its sustained intellectuality — shown in the 
unflagging directness, precision, and con- 
tinuity with which its chief character is 
made to develop itself in action, under the 
well-contrived stress of propulsive circum- 
stances — wins and holds the respect and 
admiration of the thoughtful mind. Its 
object — the noblest by which art can be 
actuated — is likewise found to be deeply 
impressive ; that object being to present in 
self-sacrifice, a grand setting and with splendid emphasis 
the beauty of self-sacrifice — the simple yet 
glorious idea, which at once destroys all 
meanness, envy, malice, fear, and puny self- 
seeking, that the best use a man can make 
of his life is to give it for the benefit of his 
fellow-creatures. 

The simplicity of all this is another obsta- 
cle which has ever stood considerably in the 
way of the effective, practical illustration 
and enforcement of " Ion " — simplicity be- 
ing the one supreme quality most difficult 
either to realize or to convey. Each motive 
simplicity of Ion's conduct is elemental; each of his 
and strength actg - g direct . h} s personality is like white 

of the char- ... 

acterof/<>«. marble. Virtue is his nature, readiness in 
duty his condition, and in the several suc- 
cessive situations in which he is displayed 



MARY ANDERSON. 

he presents always the same grandeur of 
heroic magnanimity. He will be the mes- 
senger of the priests to the dangerous 
Adrastus, and he has no fear of the menaced 
doom of death. He fronts the formidable 
King with a fearless brow, and charms and 
subdues him. He joins with more than the 
serenity of Brutus in the oath which devotes 
the sinful monarch to sacrificial destruction. 
He is himself ready to strike the awful blow 
that the high gods of his religion have com- 
manded. And when at last it is apparent 
that his own death can alone preserve his 
country from pestilence and ruin, he walks 
to the grave as to a festival, and with his 
own hand pours out his heart's blood upon 
the altar of the offended deities of Greece, erature. 
He is the Antinous of dramatic literature — 
the " one entire and perfect chrysolite " of 
beautiful young manhood, human goodness, 
and serene self-sacrifice. It taxes all the re- 
sources of exalted spirituality and of refined 
mechanism to bring forth this brave and 
lovely image of ideal excellence. 

Miss Anderson's performance of Ion was 



41 



The Antin- 
ous of lit- 



The actress 



observed with intense eagerness by a brill- exceeds ex- 
iant assemblage. The young actress was 
fortunate in it beyond promise or anticipa- boy. 



pectation as 
the Greek 



42 MARY ANDERSON. 

tion. The soulful innocence of her nature, 
breathing through every look, seemed the 
literal radiation of the spirit of Io?i. Her 
figure, in the garments of the Greek boy, 
was like a statue by Phidias. Her move- 
ments had a large imperial grace, and her 
equably-poised temperament — slow to ignite 
and never yet profoundly disturbed — aided 
this effect of animated marble. Her elocu- 
tion partook of the symmetry which, like an 
atmosphere, seemed to enfold the whole 
effort; it was fluent, melodious, noble — 
neither dropped into colloquial tameness 
nor jarred by spasmodic breaks. More than 
ever, as this performance proceeded, it could 
be felt that this actress should sternly re- 
strict herself within the fields of the imagi- 
native drama, as far as possible removed 
from "realism" and from the " emotional " 
fonhtdlssic scn ° o1 of acting. Her style is the grand 
drama. style, and more and more, as the years drift 

away, she ought to make the traditions of 
Mrs. Siddons and Charlotte Cushman live 
again. Her embodiment of Ion is a satisfy- 
ing augury that she can do it. The imper- 
sonation had a splendid glow of imagination; 
it was ethereal and exalted ; it was beauti- 
ful in its refinement; and, in its denote- 



MARY ANDERSON. 



43 



Tribute of 
the Elks of 



ments of capacity and unexplored resource, 
it was very eloquent. Miss Anderson has 
done nothing upon the stage that is sweeter, 
purer, or higher than this. 

The engagement ended, on January 8, 
with Meg Merrilies, and Miss Anderson 
ended her season, on May 7, at Trenton. 
Shortly before closing this period of labour 
she acted in Cincinnati, as Pauline, for the 
benefit of the Benevolent Order of Elks, Cincinnati, 
and that society presented to her an address 
in which was well expressed the public senti- 
ment of the time : 

" To-day the Elks of Cincinnati have the honour of 
paying tribute to a representative American actress. 
It seems but yesterday since Miss Mary Anderson 
first stepped upon the stage, a type of the beauty 
and excellence of the girlhood of her noble State. 
To-day she is the unchallenged exponent of the 
younger heroines of classic tragedy. That she can 
pause to respond, through the Elks, to the cry of 
her brother and sister professionals in distress, and 
lend them for a day the splendid aid of her genius 
and her acquirements will not lessen the lustre of 
her laurels." 

On September 26 Miss Anderson began 
at Troy the season of 1881-82, and there, 
on September 28, she impersonated for the V ^ ^"' 
first time in her life the character of Galatea, first time. 



44 



Also 

" Roland's 

Daughter." 



1882. 



Restores the 
original text 
of " Romeo 
and Juliet." 

February 3. 



Juliet again. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

in Mr. W. S. Gilbert's comedy of " Pygma- 
lion and Galatea," with which her name 
and memory are now closely entwined. On 
October i she produced at Syracuse, for 
the first time on our stage, the play of 
"Roland's Daughter," a piece translated 
and adapted from the French by the late 
Miss Annie Ford (Mrs. Thornton), the brill- 
iant, lamented daughter of the eminent 
theatrical manager, Mr. John T. Ford, 
of Baltimore; and in this she enacted 
Berthe. 

This year Miss Anderson acted at Booth's 
Theatre in New York from January 2 to 
January 28, beginning as Juliet and ending 
as Parthenia. In producing " Romeo and 
Juliet" she now restored the original text, 
and it was seen that she had revised much 
of the stage-business of Juliet. 

Miss Anderson's performance of Juliet — 
however, as an ideal, it may fall short of 
what is accepted by the best thought of 
critical literature as Shakespeare's concep- 
tion, and whatever may be its defects of 
execution — is an achievement of estimable 
import. The quality that gives value to 
an effort in the art of acting is its power 



MARY ANDERSON. 



45 



to irradiate a charming or an ennobling 
influence. As to the element of accuracy, 
although this has its relative bearing on the 
central question, no spectator, aside from Spirit and 
the technical critical student, gives himself p^ 1011 P ref - 

' ° erableto 

much concern. Miss Anderson's perform- accuracy, 
ance of Juliet might be absolutely correct, 
and still, for the public, be of no conse- 
quence whatever. The part stands there in 
Shakespeare's tragedy, and any person who 
is capable of comprehending that work can 
understand what the part means. The thing 
which is rightfully expected of an actress The ^ st 

. . mustillumine 

who undertakes it, the thing which alone the character, 
makes her work of significance and precious 
import to others, is that illumination, that 
light and fire of her own nature, which she 
is able to pour into the poetic mould, so as 
to suffuse a correct form of art with the glow- 
ing warmth of an immortal spirit. The right 
form is indispensable as a basis. Juliet must 
not be acted as if she were Mrs. Haller or The 
Duchess of Malfi. But, for the transcendent 
worth of a portrayal of Juliet, for the quality 
that makes it an abiding treasure among 
the intellectual and spiritual possessions of 
the world, the observer must look at what 



4 6 



Her Juliet 
deeper and 
finer in feel- 
ing. 



Increasing 
effect of her 
Juliet. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

the actress puts into it. Miss Anderson's 
embodiment of Juliet was not only right in 
stage convention, but it easily went beyond 
that point and became thrilling and noble 
with the loveliness of its spirit and the 
glamour of its woful passion. Thus illum- 
ined, it had the touch of that final and 
crowning radiance which makes the dra- 
matic art a beneficent power in human 
society. The effect, upon Miss Anderson's 
auditors, of her simple tenderness in the 
scenes between Juliet and Romeo, of her 
desolation in the moment after the final 
parting with The Nurse, of her passionate 
terror in the hysterical frenzy of the potion 
scene, and of her noble, tragic recklessness 
in the suicide, was that of profound sym- 
pathy and emotion. There were spontane- 
ous and emphatic plaudits, to bear witness 
of this result ; there was the deeper applause 
of tears ; there was the still deeper recog- 
nition of that suddenly awakened and 
always sublime melancholy which accom- 
panies the broad contemplation of tragedy 
and misery in human life. 

There are considerations that slightly 
qualify and define this estimate of the per- 
formance. Miss Anderson's Juliet, notwith- 



MARY ANDERSON. *~ 

standing the charm that it superadds to 
stage proficiency, still leaves a sense of un- 
fulfilment. To look closely at her method 
of treatment — her postures, gestures, facial 
play, pauses, movements, and stage busi- 
ness — was to see that the structure of the 
action had not, as to every detail, been 
rigidly and exactly prepared in advance. It n ot To^Tai- 
is unwise to trust to inspiration or to what ways trusted. 
is called the impulse of the moment. Occa- 
sionally such an impulse may be of inesti- 
mable value ; but, as a rule, the only safe 
way, and the great way, in acting is to 
dominate every fibre of the work with 
a clear and positive intellectual purpose. 
There is not one person in a thousand who, 
in a question of acting, can afford to leave Forethought 
any detail, however seemingly insignificant *" n p ^^ 
(for nothing is trivial in a picture that others sentiai. 
must see), to the accident of chance or 
caprice. Excess was the blemish that occa- 
sionally marred this Juliet. Not in ideal. 
There are no mysteries about the character 
of Juliet. Miss Anderson understands it 
perfectly and makes its significance per- 
fectly apparent. But as to execution the 
actress sometimes lost her grasp by allowing 
feeling to run away with art. Some judges 



4 8 



Facility of , 
execution 
must become 
a second 
nature. 



Insufficiency 
of the pas- 
sion of her 
Juliet. 



Involuntary 
action of 
deep feeling. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

think this a merit, and so it might be if the 
feelings, when they run away, would always 
take the right road. There comes a time, 
in the ripe maturity of an actor's experience, 
when they generally do, and that time, no 
doubt, will come for Miss Anderson. Her 
instincts in dramatic art — as she has shown 
in many characters — are magnificent. The 
errors of her mechanism ensue from the 
neglect to reduce those instincts to positive 
principles and precise designs. 

Another element of incompleteness in this 
Juliet was a lack of volume in the passion. 
The quality was the right quality, and it 
made the work pathetic and beautiful. But 
there was not enough of it. To touch this 
note is to touch the most delicate attribute 
by which dramatic art is affected. The 
artistic mind may make, and ought to make, 
a perfect plan of expression, but the grandest 
and finest design cannot, in its fulfilment, 
expend a wealth of the heart, which the 
heart has not yet acquired. Art is inade- 
quate here — because here the draft is upon 
the depths of the soul wherein are garnered 
up all the lessons of sorrow and misery that 
are taught in the experience of a great 
nature. The feeling that flows out of those 



MARY ANDERSON. 49 

depths will take its own time and its own 
way, will give its own tremendous force and 
burning ardour to simulated love, and add 
the midnight of its own anguish to the dark- 
ness of simulated grief. To assert that 
there are no such depths in Shakespeare's 
Juliet, and therefore to infer that they are 
not essential beneath a stage portrayal 
of the characters, is to ignore the poetic 
aspect of the part and of the tragedy, as a Representa- 
representative conception of human love tlv ^ as P ectof 

r x "Romeo and 

tragically blighted and human misery tri- Juliet." 
umphant in death. A school-girl may be 
the volatile miss in her teens who is the 
Juliet of commonplace prose. Miss Ander- 
son takes no such view of the subject, but is 
splendidly and consistently poetic in every 
element of her work. Only it is to be said 
that in some situations of poetical tragedy 
there are heights to which the wings of the 
imagination cannot soar, but to which an The heart 
actor may better rise on the great waves of feel- J^ ^ 1 - ^ 
ing — the ground-swell of the human heart, tion. 
In the lighter passages of the tragedy — in 
the balcony scene and the wheedling of The 
Nurse — Miss Anderson was the personifi- 
cation of blooming grace and winning, girl- 
like fascination. In the stormy passages, 
4 



5o 



A better 
queen than 
lover. 



Galatea and 
Berths 



MARY ANDERSON. 

which exact a tempest of power, she was a 
superb woman. In the realm of Juliet's 
tenderness and Juliet 's suffering, while she 
did all that the imagination of a happy, 
buoyant, youthful nature could be expected 
to do, she yet left something to be accom- 
plished in a riper time. It was felt, also, 
that the imperial stature and grand gesticu- 
lation of the actress make her more con- 
sonant with queens than with lovers, more 
fit for sovereignty than for suffering. It 
cannot be easy for the royal and conquering 
mind of a young Ze7iobia to merge itself in 
the passionate heart of Juliet. 

Miss Anderson presented Galatea for the 
first time in New York on January 7, at 
Booth's Theatre, and she was entirely suc- 
cessful in it ; nor has her impersonation of 
it undergone much change since that time. 
On January 14 she first acted in New York 
the part of Berthe\ in " The Daughter of 
Roland," giving a performance nobly heroic 
in ideal and effective in many points of ex- 
ecution. Of her Galatea the present writer 
then said: The aspect is beautiful. The 
spirit is both guileless and. passionate. The 
humourous parts are spoken and acted with 
absolute simplicity. There is not one trace 






MARY ANDERSON. 



51 



of coquetry. The soul of the child is incar- 
nated in the consummate purity of the 
woman; and the significance of the ideal 
and of the text is conveyed with the ex- 
pertness and adequacy of accomplished art. 
In Berihe Miss Anderson illustrates the 
power of an earnest, ardent, impassioned 
mind to electrify a somewhat cold and bar- 
ren subject. The character is both heroic Character- 
and romantic, but it figures in a succession *f* cs , of ,, 

" Roland s 

of declamatory scenes which by themselves Daughter.' 
would arouse only a languid interest. The 
personality of the actress diffuses itself 
through them in a rich glow of splendour, 
making the experience actual despite its sur- 
rounding atmosphere of remoteness and un- 
reality. In Berth? s confession of her love for 
Gerald — which is a passage of rare delicacy 
— the actress employs the lower tones of her 
voice, together with a sweetly subdued man- 
ner, so as to produce a remarkable effect of 
tenderness. Her action and vocal treatment 
when describing the combat are powerful 
and victorious ; this exacting passage being 
wrought up, with tumultuous feeling that 
never once breaks out of the restraints of 
art, to a spirited and satisfying climax. In 
Berthe Miss Anderson finds occasion for 



52 

Variety of 
moods and 
spirited 
action. 



January 18. 



Again suc- 
cessful as 
The Count- 



Complexity 
of woman's 
nature. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

the display of many contrasted moods, for 
much lofty and sonorous declamation, and 
for eloquent by-play — as when, standing 
upon the throne, she hears the Saracen's 
taunts, and sees him draw her dead father's 
sword. The crowning excellence of her 
impersonation is the consistent sustain- 
ment of an exalted ideal. In the light of 
such an embodiment the romantic heroism 
and religious zeal of ancient chivalry be- 
come living facts. Only a nature of pro- 
found sincerity and innate nobleness could 
carry such a part to such a height of 
success. 

A repetition of " Love " has again pre- 
sented Miss Anderson as The Countess. It 
is an embodiment in which passion is con- 
trolled by intellectual pride, and in which, 
little by little, — now flashing out through 
irresistible impulse, now curbed and turned 
to bitter arrogance by the reaction of self- 
contempt, — the honest love in a woman's 
heart is seen to increase and develop till it 
overwhelms her nature. The observance 
of such a personation is, therefore, an in- 
voluntary analysis of feminine thoughts, 
feelings, caprices, and thousand inexplicable 
ways; and thus to see The Countess well 



MARY ANDERSON. ^ 

acted is to be made wiser in that knowledge 
of human nature which the moralist tells us 
is the proper study of mankind. To see the 
part as it is acted by Miss Anderson is to 
look upon a noble embodiment of proud 
beauty, and to admire an expert assumption 
of successive moods — simulated scorn suc- 
ceeding to haughty self-restraint, and ten- 
derness gradually subduing pride. She has 
repose; she illustrates the value and force 
of repressed emotion, and she acts unusually Fine fadal 
well with the face — allowing the feelings play. 
of the heart and the changing impulses of 
the mind to show themselves in play of 
feature no less than in voice and action. 
Nothing could be finer in the way of 
essentially dramatic expression than her 
mute observance of the secretly beloved 
Huon, after he has made his dangerous 
choice and refused obedience to his ruler. 
The command of The Countess to bring back . . . . 

~ An inspiring 

the fugitive lover is always a climax in this climax, 
comedy, and Miss Anderson gives it with 
inspiring excitement and in a voice of clarion 
might. It is before the love is finally 
triumphant over the pride of The Countess 
that the powers and resources of the actress 
are at their best. When the culmination 



54 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Ultimate 



Actress and 
character 



has been reached her nature seems to tire 
of so much sustained fervency, and the last 

dejection. scenes are somewhat listless. But this is a 
blemish of execution, subject to caprice of 
mood. The ideal is fine, the execution is 
smooth, the character is made to stand out 
in bold relief, and the various elements are 
adroitly fused together. It has seldom hap- 
pened that a part and its representative are 
so well matched as in this instance. The 
statuesque person of the actress, her almost 
Gothic coldness of aspect and of intellect, 

well matched, her variable youth, her capacity of thrilling 
animation when aroused, and her ring- 
ing melodious voice, "rich as woodland 
thunder," combine to make her especially 
consonant to this stately and fiery heroine ; 
the strongest of the women that Sheridan 
Knowles has enshrined in his antiquated, 
artificial, queer versification. 

April 22. Miss Anderson closed the season at 

Williamsburgh, having acted in thirty-seven 
cities since September 26, 1881. In all of 
them she has been greeted with public 
enthusiasm. Her growth in knowledge and 
control of her own powers is steady and 

toiled for*" sufficiently rapid. Her personation of 

Galatea. Galatea has everywhere been accounted 



MARY ANDERSON. 



55 



one of the best works of her life, and un- 
doubtedly it is one of the best performances 
that now grace the stage. In Parthenia 
and Evadne she has no contemporary equal, 
and in portions of The Countess and Bianca 
she has maintained a brilliant supremacy. 
To have accomplished so much in spite of 
/ the lack of stage-training in childhood, and ^ 
notwithstanding obstacles incident to im- 
maturity, is to hold and merit an honoured 
place in the front rank of the dramatic pro- 
fession. The SUCCeSS Of SUCh an actreSS is Significance 

a credit to the public taste, nor in the ^ he P r r °™ se 
sternest critical mood can it be doubted cess. 
that her future achievements will reward 
her public for its forbearance toward the 
faults of youth and its practical encour- 
agement of true and fine abilities. 

The season of 1882-83 was opened by 
Miss Anderson in Brooklyn, September 25, 
with Juliet, and she also enacted Evadne, 
Julia, Galatea, Pauline, and Berthe. 

Miss Anderson's treatment of the opening October 1. 
scenes of Juliet — with a view to prefigure 
the woful destiny of that heroine — is in a 
high degree poetical, and it produces a 
beautiful and touching effect. Her elocution 
is made surprisingly fine, and her manner 



56 



A delicate art 
method. 



Julia, in 

"TheHunch- 

back." 



Nov. 20. 



Louisville's 
tribute to its 
favourite. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

is heightened in repose by a careful repres- 
sipn of force, and by a free use of quiet 
gestures and low tones ; while — notably in 
the character of Julia — she has conveyed 
a sense of harmonious proportion, in the 
gradual building up of the part and the 
development of almost tragic intensity 
under pressure of afflicting circumstances. 
The suspense of suffering and trial in the 
letter scene with Cliffords* evenly sustained, 
and with earnest feeling and sweet, woman- 
like grace. With a mechanism entirely 
concealed, of all the transitions in the part, 
with more emphasis in the lovely, almost 
rustic, simplicity of the opening scene, and 
with a more careful treatment of the last 
five minutes of the piece, this performance 
will be as perfect as anything of the kind 
can be — and it will win for the young 
actress many a wreath of laurel yet. 

At Louisville, Kentucky, on November 
11, Miss Anderson ended an engagement 
which had been prosperous and brilliant to 
a remarkable degree. Louisville, although 
not her birthplace, is the city in which her 
girlhood was passed, and its inhabitants feel 
a natural pride in her career. Crowds of 
enthusiastic spectators greeted her each 



MARY ANDERSON. ey 

night, and at the close of the last perform- 
ance a wreath of silver laurel was publicly- 
presented to her, upon the stage, by the 
Mayor of Louisville, in behalf of its citi- 
zens. Miss Anderson expressed her grati- 
tude in earnest and graceful words and with 
touching sincerity. Mr. Henry Watterson, 
in The Courier- Journal, fitly rounded the 
city's tribute with an eloquent article, in 
which the career of Miss Anderson is thus 
commemorated : 

That Mary Anderson went hence a poor girl in 
quest of fame and fortune, and that she has come 
back the most celebrated and important woman Co ™ mem - 
upon the stage of her country, — bringing with her marks b 
youth, beauty, and riches, — tells a story more fairy- Henry Wat- 
like than any in which she appears as the mimic terson. 
heroine. Whatever be the difference among critics 
touching the incidents of her acting, it cannot be 
denied that she is a great presence and figure of our 
time. We should not omit from this resume of the 
powerful traits of intellect and character which have 
made the actress great the virtues of unaffectedness, 
enthusiasm, and simple, unostentatious Christianity 
which make the woman glorious. Whoever widens 
the area of woman's work and points her a way to 
her own maintenance and the emancipation of her 
children makes a mark upon life's fly-leaf which 
angels like to look at; and, whether the page so 
marked bear a song or a sermon, a play or a tract, 
the result, being good, is recorded all the same in 

A* 



58 



Noble both 
as woman 
and actress. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

heaven. Mary Anderson has made this mark, 
broad and deep. Her genius has made her rich 
and great ; but she is none the less a noble type of 
the working woman. She has lifted up the brand 
which was held so firmly in the hands of a long line 
of good women, from Siddons to Cushman, and 
kept it burning like an oriflamme ; and, standing 
alone, a splendid representative of the heroic and 
classic drama, she stands also conspicuous as a rep- 
resentative of the womanhood of her country and 
her time. 



A Christmas 
gift. 



£883. 



Accurate 
dressing of 
" The Lady 
of Lyons." 



January 16. 

Pauline a 
lovely em- 
bodiment. 



A military organization at Philadelphia, 
for which Miss Anderson had done some 
service, publicly presented to her, at the 
Chestnut Street Opera House, a magnificent 
crown, set with precious jewels. 

On January i, this year, Miss Anderson 
appeared at Washington. On January 15 
she was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, 
New York, and she remained there until 
February 10. A revival of "The Lady of 
Lyons " was now accomplished, its charac- 
ters being scrupulously arrayed in dresses 
of the time of the First Empire. 

Miss Anderson is more than usually beau- 
tiful in the Empress Josephine garb. In 
all its physical attributes this embodiment 
of Pauline was an image of peerless loveli- 
ness. No woman has appeared upon the 



MARY ANDERSON. 



59 



stage in our time so entirely fitted as Miss 
Anderson is — by stature, demeanour, intel- 
lectual poise, and a tone of coldly spiritual 
refinement — to represent Pride. She thrilled 
her audience by the sincerity and firm and 
well-veiled art with which she advanced to 
the other exigence of the character, and 
likewise depicted the passion of Love. It 
is the struggle between these two emotions 
that Bulwerhas illustrated in this play; and, 
although the observer may sometimes smile 
at the improbabilities, the fantastic expedi- This comedy 
ents, the wild scheme, and the lingual fus- f^^ e " 
tian of the comedy, this struggle is one that defects, 
always will command sympathetic attention 
when shown by an actress who is beautiful, 
artistic, and in earnest. Miss Anderson's 
expression of the tranquil ecstasy of con- 
tent, in Mehwtte's wooing scene, might be 
cited as a significant subtlety of her imper- 
sonation. Her assumption of sarcasm, her 
storm of passion, and her ultimate splendid 
self-abandonment, in the cottage scenes, 
revealed a variety of power and a depth of 
passionate tenderness that well might startle of ^^Js 
those observers who have mistakenly ac- refuted, 
counted her hopelessly frigid in tempera- 
ment and mechanical in style. At the 



6o 



MARY ANDERSON. 



The actress 

essentially 

tragic. 



beginning, with exquisite skill and propriety, 
she gave to Pauline a tone of languid arti- 
fice; but that was cast aside the moment 
the character became dominated by genuine 
feeling, and thereafter the treatment of the 
ordeal with Melnotte was marked with deep 
tenderness struggling through righteous, nat- 
ural, woman-like resentment. The preemi- 
nence and especial individuality of the 
actress were seen to be tragical, — the out- 
bursts, when they came, being somewhat 
out of unison with the level mood of the 
part, and, in fact, the wild utterances of a 
personal nature much larger, broader, and 
deeper than that which it assumed. So 
much pathos, however, such lovely use of 
gentleness, and such forlorn misery, in the 
crushed condition of Pauline, have seldom 
or never been infused into the part. 

With the impoverished mental state of 
that spectator who looks at a dramatic per- 
formance merely to ascertain whether the 
performer is strictly accurate and consistent 
in method it is impossible to sympathize. 
Life is short, and for most persons who 
possess feeling and the power of thought its 

Thepettiness . ^ few and i nfrequent To prow l 

of superficial J J ~i r 

criticism. around with a microscope and a tape- 



January 26. 



MARY ANDERSON. 6l 

measure is to sadden it beyond endurance. 
Nothing but spiritual starvation can come 
of that parsimonious waste. There are 
times, of course, when the mind must work 
with all its Masonic implements. That is 
another matter — the laying of the founda- 
tions of judgment, broad and true in exact 
knowledge and immutable principles. But 
in the presence of artistic works which are 
gracious and lovely in spirit — and therefore Thes ^^ 
filled with help and cheer for the mind that the life, 
is striving to poise itself in serenity and hope 
amidst the frets and mutations of life — there 
is no need of the idle and puny pursuit of 
peeping about for superficial flaws. The 
performances that Miss Anderson has given 
are not such as promote controversy over 
mistaken ideals. She is not an experimenter 
upon Hamlet and King Lear. The parts 
that she plays are completely within her 
comprehension, and she states their mean- earness > 

r ' power, and 

ing with indubitable accuracy and unmis- charm, 
takable force. Still more — and this is the 
really vital fact in the matter — she invests 
them with an irresistible charm. The hun- 
dreds of able writers scattered throughout 
America who for several years have been 
telling her that when she acts better she 



62 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Proficiency 
in mechan- 
ism gained 
by continual 
practice. 



"\ 



Art glorified 
by nature. 



will be a better actress are quite safe in that 
stronghold of opinion. The use of voice, 
the management of drapery, the regulation 
of gesture, the introduction of pauses such 
as seem to happen of their own accord, the 
ductile employment of attitude, the union 
of facial expression whether with silence or 
speech, the deft, seemingly unconscious but 
perfectly precise subordination of theatrical 
adjuncts to the spirit of a character and the 
purpose of a scene — these and other essen- 
tial elements of acting unite to form a com- 
plex system of mechanism in which, for all 
actors, continual practice is the only road to 
perfect proficiency. Observers who choose 
to amuse themselves in that way can readily 
specify and dilate upon the rough places in 
Miss Anderson's execution. In the mean- 
time her works, while not deficient in art, 
remain surcharged with the opulent vigour 
of happy, unclouded, unsullied youth, the 
exalted and lovely stateliness of a noble 
mind, the radiance of almost peerless physi- 
cal beauty, and the glamour of a romantic 
spirit tremulous in its sensibility to the poetic 
influences of nature and art. And these are 
the conquerors. How often, in musing 
over the victorious persons of human life, 



MARY ANDERSON. fy 

the thinker comes back to Emerson's com- Character 
prehensive statement of the whole truth of 1S Fate " 
the subject : 

Another is born 
To make the sun forgotten . . . 
I hold it of little matter 
Whether your jewel be of pure water, 
A rose diamond or a white, 
But whether it dazzle me with light. 

In the personation of Julia Miss Ander- _ 

r ... Impressive 

son was more than commonly impressive in in Julia. 
her denotement of the majesty of grief. 
With the lighter elements of the part, with 
its innocence, sweetness, grace, glee, and 
pride, and with its transit from rural sim- 
plicity to superficial artifice and feather- 
brained folly, she is easily conversant ; and 
as to these her various condition and devi- 
ous and piquant action were admirable. 
There comes a time, however, in the expe- 
rience of Julia, when almost the greatest 
sorrow that a woman can feel has suddenly . raglc cnsi f 

J ma woman s 

aroused her to a sense of the tragic reality of life, 
life, and thrown her for support upon the 
resources of her own spiritual strength. At 
certain moments in the fourth and fifth acts 
of "The Hunchback" its heroine can rise 
to a noble height of moral dignity. All 



6 4 



MARY ANDERSON. 



littleness falls away from her. The tumult 
of passion is hushed by the consciousness 
of fault and of duty. The mood is one of 
settled misery — but the soul will be true to 
itself and adequate to every test that fate 
may enjoin. It was in her exquisite repose, 
Repose in at the extreme tension of the feeling thus 
passion. indicated, that the actress attained to the 
crowning excellence of her work. There is 
a moment of this kind too in her perform- 
ance of Galatea, — when the ill-fated girl 
is hearing her doom of repudiation and 
exile from the lips of the blind Pygmalion : 
and here again Miss Anderson acted in a 
vein of exquisite pathos. It is no common 
intellect that understands, and it is no com- 
mon achievement in the dramatic art that 
The soul makes others understand, the absolute iso- 
;J!Z!f ° ne lation and loneliness of the human soul in 

in great 

moments. every one of the great experiences of mortal 
life. Miss Anderson's mental and artistic 
growth is remarkable. She will eventually 
be hailed — perhaps by some who read 
these words — at the summit of her profes- 
sion as an actress of the great heroines of 
classic tragedy. Toward that point she is 
moving with the inexorable certainty of a 
destined consummation. 



MARY ANDERSON. 65 

It is interesting to perceive — as the January 3 i. 
thoughtful observer may do in looking at 
Miss Anderson's personation of Parthenia Personal 
— the power of inherent mental nobility ^ ze * r ™ n vl ab ] 
and spiritual grace to invest a purely liter- stract ideal, 
ary ideal with the attributes of human life 
and make it a living, breathing, loving 
woman. The Greek girl who goes forth 
into the camp of barbarians to redeem her 
father from slavery is a compound of many 
excellent qualities, — of candour, courage, 
honour, heroism, sweetness, and truth, — but, 
to crown them all, she possesses childlike ^"""das 
innocence. Without this, the cleverest tech- Parthenia. 
nical embodiment of this character would 
remain ineffective, because obviously artifi- 
cial and remote from sympathy. Many 
women no doubt possess, in various degrees, 
most of the attributes that are shown in 
Miss Anderson's embodiment; but not one 
woman in ten thousand is of that essentially 
childlike temperament which enables this 
actress to crown her work with the simple 
beauty of the wild violet. " Nature is above 
art in that." 

Miss Anderson has again impersonated February 4 . 
Juliet and Bianca. In each part she has ^ /zV2,and . 

■*■ Btanca again 

given a surprising exhibition alike of in- considered. 



66 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Woman and 
actress 
equally im- 
plicated in 
Juliet 



Increased 
harmony 
of the per- 
formance. 



herent power and artistic growth. When 
formerly she acted Juliet here, the perform- 
ance, although right in ideal, lovely in spirit, 
and full of tragic power, seemed deficient 
in volume of passion. The darker aspects 
of Juliet's experience appeared to have been 
reached by means of the imagination rather 
than the heart, and therefore to lack con- 
summate reality ; and there were inequali- 
ties in the structural form of the work. 
Throughout Miss Anderson's impersonation 
of Juliet now it is evident that the soul of 
the woman within the actress is aroused 
and swayed by the spirit of the character, 
and not simply affected, in an intermittent 
manner, by the exigencies of special scenes. 
Deeper study, long brooding upon the mo- 
tive of the part, and the involuntary insight 
as to expression which is gained in frequent 
acting of it have augmented Miss Ander- 
son's ideal, in warmth, colour, and harmony. 
The same passion which becomes frenzied 
terror in the potion scene and wild and 
awful yet sublime abandonment in that of 
the suicide, is now distinctly visible through 
the ardour and ecstasy of the moonlit con- 
fession of love, in the beautiful scene of the 
balcony. In the qualities thus indicated 



MARY ANDERSON. 



67 



the personation will continue to mature; 
but already it has become a massive and 
rounded image of love and grief. The 
same woman's heart beats in every one of 

Truth and 

the phases of the experience that is por- not fiction, 
trayed, and the spectator beholds it as life 
and forgets that it is fiction. Dramatic art 
could not better succeed than it does as 
used by Miss Anderson in maintaining the 
essential girlishness of Juliet during the bal- 
cony scene and throughout the enticing, 
capricious, eager interview with the tanta- 
lizing Nurse, as well as in marking the 
awakening of the woman's heart under the 
stress of overwhelming passion. She has unityand 
unified the work. There is no dissonance beauty of 

, ...... m , . her Juliet. 

anywhere visible in it. The mtense, reso- 
lute, imaginative speech to Friar Law- 
rence — " Bid me leap, rather than marry 
Paris''' — falls in the perfect tone of nature 
from the same lips that have been breathing 
out the soft, caressing murmurs and golden 
rapture of contented love. The passion, in 
the final parting with Romeo, is that of com- 
plete self-abandonment ; and in the potion 
scene there is, in addition to remarkable 
power, a use of voice that is indescribably 
pathetic. Her Bianca — a part to which at 



68 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Power and 
pathos of her 
Bianca. 



She agrees 
to act in 
England. 



Farewell per- 
formances in 
the United 
States. 



The Cincin- 
nati Festival. 



first she was unequal — has now become a 
work of much tenderness and dramatic 
power, possessing all of Charlotte Cush- 
man's intensity, combined with a poetic 
grace and refined pathos distinctively its 
own; a work in which an affluent and 
prodigious force is evenly tempered with 
discretion, and throughout which burns the 
authentic, enkindling fire of genius. 

Negotiations for some time in progress, 
looking towards a professional visit to 
Great Britain, were completed on February 
10, and Miss Anderson signed an agree- 
ment with Mr. Henry E. Abbey to appear 
in London under his management. Before 
leaving America, however, she acted in 
many cities of the Republic, played a 
farewell engagement in New York, at the 
Grand Opera House, April 9 to April 21, 
and took a prominent part in the proceed- 
ings of a " Dramatic Festival," which was 
held at Cincinnati from April 30 to May 5, 
enacting in succession Julia, Desdemona, — 
for the first and only time in her life, — and 
Juliet. Her chief associates in that series 
of performances were Miss Clara Morris, 
Mr. Lawrence Barrett, Mr. James E. Mur- 
doch, and the late John McCullough. She 



MARY ANDERSON. 



6 9 



was the most conspicuous and brilliant 
figure upon the stage. It was the fortune 
of her present biographer to witness those 
performances, and to record the impression 
they produced. 

The comedy of " The Hunchback " ex- Cincinnati, 
emplifies a rare power — the faculty some- May *' 
times possessed by a man to understand , <The 
and sympathise with a woman's heart. Hunchback. 
How seldom this power is manifested in 
dramatic literature the observer sees, when 
considering how few the dramatic heroines 
are, in comparison with the dramatic heroes. 
Shakespeare's men are greater than his \ 
women, and most of the women of most S 
other dramatic writers are merely conven- 
tional. But Julia is full of woman's nature, 
and Master Walter's noble tenderness and 
fine attitude towards her are thoroughly character - 

. ° J istics of that 

nght, lovely, and pathetic. It could be old comedy, 
wished that her amiable Clifford were, for a 
lover, less sagacious as to bargains and less 
readily solicitous about his door-plate in 
moments of grief and disaster. Still there 
is a vital experience of passion and misery 
in the somewhat stilted lines of "The 
Hunchback," and this will always make it 
a potent play in the hands of fine actors. 



jO MARY ANDERSON. 

The piece has not here been treated as a 
spectacle, but the stress is thrown upon the 
acting. Mary Anderson as Julia, John 
McCullough as Master Walter, and Law- 
She is cordi- rence Barrett as Clifford are the chief names 
ally weicom- m t h e cast> mj ss Anderson was welcomed 

ed at Cincin- . ... .. . 

nati. by the great audience with a far resounding 

tumult of gladness. You know her gracious 
and lovely figure; her thoughtful, gentle 
presence; her eager, sensitive countenance; 
her regal, yet delicate dignity upon the 
stage. The stately and sweet image of 
woman and queen, she stood here in a 
garden of roses, the loveliest flower of them 
all, and there was not one heart in the vast 
assemblage that did not beat with pride and 
joy in the success of the brave and true 
American girl. Her performance of Julia 

Attributes of was a g am admirable for its propriety of 

her acting as < m ° . 

Julia. ideal, its gradual growth in dramatic develop- * 

ment, its freedom from conventional points, 
its deep tenderness and its final magnificent 
burst of eloquent passion. Her voice bore 
wonderfully well the great strain to which 
it was subjected. She has never acted the 
part with greater abandonment of self or 
richer variety of treatment, and never 
under such trying circumstances. Just 



MARY ANDERSON. y l 

after her first entrance a part of a drop Escapes a 
came crashing to the stage in front of her, dan s erous 
and after Julia had fainted in act second 
another drop, the wrong one, came down 
behind instead of before her, so that she 
had to rise and falter from the stage. Her 
adroit presence of mind in these emergencies 
matched the need of the occasion. After 
the third curtain a large banner of flowers Po ular 
depending from a green standard was applause. 
borne to her across the footlights inscribed 
" America's Pride," and the appearance of 
this tribute was the signal for a wild uproar 
of delight. This night belonged exclusively 
to the actress, and it always will be memo- 
rable in her career. 

Miss Anderson has acted Desdemona for Cincinnati, 
the first time in her life. Her ideal of the Ma ^ 3- 
fair Venetian was seen to be true, because 
accordant with what is said of Desdemona P ays f es *~ 

mona for the 

by Brabantio and Cassio. Portions of the first time, 
execution were exquisite in finish. The for- 
lorn bewilderment of the injured wife, at the 
Moor's mysterious jealousy and rage, was 
pathetic and lovely. The sudden cry of 
agony that Desdemona was made to utter 
when accused by Othello thrilled every 
heart. The performance was a little defi- 



72 



Sails for 
England. 



Her first ap- 
pearance in 
London. 



Plays Par- 
thenia. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

cient in smoothness, but it was affluent 
with sacred, womanlike feeling. The vow 
was spoken with beautiful sincerity. 

On Tuesday, May 29, 1883, Miss Ander- 
son sailed from New York, aboard the 
"Arizona," for Liverpool, not again to see 
her native land for upwards of two years, 
and destined in the meantime to establish 
her professional renown as firmly in Eng- 
land as she had already established it in 
America. Of her career upon the British 
stage it was the privilege of her present 
biographer to see but a portion. The con- 
temporary records of it, however, are ample 
and minute. Miss Anderson's first appear- 
ance in London was made on September 1, 
1883, at the Lyceum Theatre, in the char- 
acter of Parthenia in " Ingomar." Her 
choice of this play was censured, but her 
acting was generally admired and the charm 
of her personality was admitted and warmly 
extolled. Public interest for a stranger can- 
not be readily excited in London, but it 
soon began to make itself cordially manifest 
towards Miss Anderson; and when once 
she had gained popularity she never lost it. 
The character of Parthenia, exacting an 
artless temperament, a noble spirit, and 



MARY ANDERSON. 

girlish charm, proved well chosen for this 
first appearance, since its chief requirement 
is that the actress should be herself, and 
being herself she could not fail to win the 
friendship of the public. After that the 
path to success was smooth and pleasant. 
On October 27 Miss Anderson produced 
" The Lady of Lyons," and impersonated 
Pauline. On December 8 she enacted 
Galatea for the first time in England, and 
she was playing that part when the year 
ended. 

Mr. W. S. Gilbert, taking his story from 
a French original, had by this time written 
a new play for Miss Anderson, and this 
piece, called " Comedy and Tragedy," she 
brought forward in association with " Pyg- 
malion and Galatea," on January 26. Her 
first London engagement was ended on 
April 5, and thereafter she made her first 
tour of the country, appearing in Edinburgh 
(April 28), Glasgow (May 5), Manchester 
(May 12), Liverpool, Dublin, and Birming- 
ham, and closing the season on June 7. 
The rest of the summer she passed in travel, 
making incidentally a trip to Verona, there 
to study the local scenery, architecture, 
dresses, and manners, with a view to her 
5 



73 



Plays Pau- 
line and 
Galatea. 



1884. 



First appear- 
ance as 
Clarice. 



First tour of 
Great Britain 
and visit to 
Italy. 



74 



Her produc- 
tion of 
"Romeo and 
Juhet " at 
the London 
Lyceum 
Theatre. 



1885. 
Plays Julia. 



End of her 
second 
season in 
England. 



Attitude of 
the British 
press. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

projected production of " Romeo and 
Juliet." She did not act again until Sep- 
tember 6, when was begun, with Galatea 
and Clarice, her second London engage- 
ment at the Lyceum. On November 1 she 
there presented " Romeo and Juliet," and 
impersonated the heroine of that immortal 
tragedy ; and with this revival she filled out 
the year 1884, and entered upon its suc- 
cessor, in much prosperity. 

On February 24, 1885, the career of 
" Romeo and Juliet " being ended, Miss 
Anderson brought forward "The Hunch- 
back," and enacted Julia. A revival of 
"Ingomar" was effected on April 13, and 
on the 25th of that month Miss Anderson 
ended her second season at the London 
Lyceum. 

Elaborate discussion of Miss Anderson's 
professional exploits and experience in 
Great Britain is not intended in this chroni- 
cle. Her acting was amply and thoughtfully 
considered throughout the British press, and 
it continues to be a prominent subject in 
British periodical literature. It has prompted 
some controversy, but in general its worth 
has been recognized. The most conspicuous 
of the many English tributes that were 



MARY ANDERSON. yr 

elicited by her performance of Juliet, was 
written in the Nineteenth Century, by Lord £^j*l 
Lytton ("Owen Meredith"). Portions of Lytton. 
that composition are signally thoughtful 
and eloquent. The voice of censure when- 
ever audible was commonly heard to iterate 
the old charge of artifice and coldness. ™ e jS 
Various judges, discussing the art of Miss considered. 
Anderson, objected to it that they were not 
able ever to forget that she is an actress; 
and from this alleged fact they drew the 
remarkable deduction that she lacks dra- 
matic ability. The chief canon and first 
exaction of current dramatic criticism, in- 
deed, appears to be that the actor must be 
so entirely and thoroughly an actor that he 
will seem to be not an actor at all. This 
idea of self-abandonment as the crown and 
glory of all acting, is by no means a new 
one ; but it happens to be just now insisted 
upon, with more than usual emphasis, by a 
number of critics who seem to have only 
recently found it out. It is the ancient doc- 
trine of the art to conceal art. A class of 
the public, in all the great capitals of the 
world, is highly educated, at present, in the Ars cdare 
epicureanism of art; and this class demands, artem. 
for its enjoyment of the drama, perfect 



76 MARY ANDERSON. 

machinery perfectly well employed. Its 
appetite, furthermore, is critical rather than 
sympathetic, and more physical than spirit- 
ual. Its delight is in vivisection. It gives 
more heed to analysis of the actor than to 
analysis of the character that the actor has 
undertaken to portray, or to his method in 
portraying it. The question is no longer 
whether an actor has formed, and can pre- 
sent, a true ideal of an author's conception ; 
but whether the actor, in his or her own 
flesh and blood, is the living reality, of such 
I. c . tm f ls and such simulated emotions. An artist 

i imitation, 

; and personal who maintains the dignified reticence of a 
T^id 7 b se lf _res P ectm g human being, and keeps the 
sacrificed. world at arm's length, is characterized as 
" cold " ; but the abdication of all privacy 
and all sanctity is " genius." Up to a cer- 
tain point there is reason beneath these 
views ; but surely it ought never to be for- 
gotten that acting, after all, is nothing more 
thanjmitation, and that imitation, if carried 
too far, becomes obnoxious. After art has 
done its utmost there will yet always remain 
a realm of human feeling and experience 
too sacred for even the footsteps of art to 
enter. 




II 



ROSALIND AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON 




Stratford-on-Avon, 
August 30, 1885. 

his storied city, so placid and 

dream-like, sitting here upon Shebe . ns 

the Avon side, serene in the the season of 

great light of an immortal fame, l88s_86 ^ 

00 . "As You 

had for some time been deeply excited by Like it." 
proclamation of the event which occurred 
last night — the first appearance of Miss 
Mary Anderson as Rosalind in Shake- 
speare's beautiful comedy of "As You 
Like It." Coming here from Salisbury, 
where I had been dreaming in the great 
cathedral and wandering among the grim 
Druid altars of Stonehenge, I found the 
town placarded with the name of this fair on-Avon. 
and famous lady ; the shop- windows teem- 
77 



Excitement 
at Stratford- 



78 



Customary- 
wanderings 
of the 

Shakespeare 
pilgrim. 



Shake- 
sperean 
haunts. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

ing with pictures of her; two of the hotels, 
the Red Horse and the Shakespeare, pre- 
empted by her theatrical manager, Mr. 
Henry E. Abbey, for the accommodation 
of her dramatic company ; every reserved 
seat in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 
already sold; many lodgings booked for 
expected visitors ; arrangements made for 
special railway trains to be run from Leam- 
ington and back on the night of the per- 
formance; and Miss Andersx«r"'the chief 
topic of conversation whenever and wher- 
ever people were assembled. Stratford is a 
place that I have visited often and fre- 
quented long, but not till now had I seen 
it aroused. In the ordinary course of things 
the visitor saunters through a solitude to 
the birthplace; pauses at New Place, the 
Guild Chapel, and the Grammar School; 
looks at Gainsborough's portrait of Garrick, 
in the Town Hall (to the character, mean- 
ing, grace, and beautiful colour of which the 
engraved copy does no adequate justice); 
talks with the eccentric, kindly, pleasant 
antiquary John Marshall, amid his Shake- 
spearean relics ; explores old Trinity, inside 
and out, musing at the tomb of Shakespeare 
and strolling among the thick graves in the 



MARY ANDERSON. jg 

quiet churchyard ; walks to Shottery, to see 
Anne Hathaway's cottage and perhaps to 
receive a sprig of rosemary from the friendly 
hand of its occupant, Mrs. Baker ; visits the 
Memorial Theatre, where the library and 
the picture-gallery are slowly increasing in 
extent and value ; drives to Wilmecote, four 
or five miles away, to enter the picturesque . 
timbered farm-house from which, it is said, 
Mary Arden, the mother of Shakespeare, Ani htsail 
was married; and, when night has fallen on the Avon, 
and the moonbeams are bathing the sweet 
landscape in silver dew, takes a boat upon 
the Avon and rows down to where the spire 
of Shakespeare's church and the great elms 
around it are reflected in the depths of the 
dark, shining stream. Many a calm and 
beneficent hour may be passed in this way, 
amid these hallowed scenes; but now I 
found that the spell of peace which com- 
monly rests upon this shrine had been com- 
pletely broken. Yesterday all was memory Popularity of 
and reverie ; to-day is all bustle and expec- . *** 

' J r Anderson 

tation. Americans, indeed, have but a faint in England, 
idea of the popularity of Miss Mary Ander- 
son in England, or the sincere, fervent 
interest that is felt by the best classes of 
English people in her professional move- 



8o 



MARY ANDERSON. 



She eclipses 
her chief 
American 
predecessors 
on the Eng- 
lish stage. 



Eminent and 
admired 
actors of the 
Old World. 



ments. She has been upon the English 
stage for two seasons ; she has acted Par- 
thetiia, Patdi?ie, Galatea, Clarice, Julia, and 
Juliet ; and in her practical success she has 
surpassed the achievement of any American 
performer in legitimate drama who preceded 
her in this land. That may, perhaps, sound 
like an extravagant statement, when it is 
remembered that among her predecessors 
here were Edwin Forrest, Edwin L. Daven- 
port, Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. Mowatt, 
Joseph Jefferson, Edwin Booth, and Law- 
rence Barrett. The fact nevertheless re- 
mains. Miss Anderson's English career has 
been attended with ample prosperity as well 
as brilliant reputation, and no dramatic 
name is at this time more highly esteemed 
in England. The question is not one of 
greatness or even of rank. Mr. Irving, 
Miss Ellen Terry, Mrs. Kendall, Mr. and 
Mrs. Bancroft, Mr. Toole, Miss Sarah Bern- 
hardt, Mrs. Langtry, Mr. Wilson Barrett — 
each has eminence and a public following. 
But the beautiful and brilliant woman who 
came here so modestly, who so well repre- 
sents what is best in the American stage, 
and who has so richly adorned by her 
personal worth the laurels gained by her 



MARY ANDERSON. 8l 

genuine merit, possesses the affectionate Exceptional 
good-will of the whole people, and thus ^ rfMary 

° . r c i Anderson. 

stands in exceptional repute. I have found 
her name known and respected and her 
portrait displayed in remote, secluded ham- 
lets where one would not suppose that the 
inhabitants had ever heard of a theatre or 
an actor. When, therefore, it was made 
known that Miss Anderson would enact 
Rosalind for the first time in her life, and at 
Stratford-on-Avon for the benefit of the 
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, it was nat- 
ural that a wave of excitement, to which Londoners 

• , _ -r , . interested in 

even mighty London gave an impetus, ^5^^^ 
should soon surge around this usually peace- performance, 
ful haven of Shakespearean pilgrimage. 
Such a wave I found here; and until to- 
day — when all is over and the actors are 
gone and the representatives of the London 
press have returned to the capital, and the 
crowd has dispersed— Stratford has not ^ ow ^ debb 

A of public 

seemed in the least like itself. Now it is feeling. 
once more as silent as a cloister and as 
slumberous as the bower of the Sleeping 
Beauty in the wood. But from this time it 
will possess a new charm for the American 
pilgrim — being associated henceforth with 
the pure fame and the sweet and gentle pres- 
5* 



82 



The 

Shakespeare 
Memorial 
Theatre. 



Local hon- 
ours to the 
actress. 



Visits old 
shrines and 
old friends. 



Merry hours 
in Stratford. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

ence of the authentic queen of the American 
stage. 

The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre will 
hold nearly seven hundred persons. Its 
reserved portion contains four hundred 
and eighty seats. All of these were sold 
within an hour and a half of the opening of 
the box-office, on August 25th. Miss An- 
derson came down on the 27th, with her 
company, and rested at the Red Horse, 
and thus she was enabled to devote two 
evenings precedent to the performance to a 
dress rehearsal of the comedy. Many social 
attentions were offered to her. Under the 
escort of the Mayor of Stratford she visited 
Clopton House, — a picturesque and famous 
old place, the former residence of Sir Hugh 
Clopton, who was a Lord Mayor of Lon- 
don in 1492, reign of Henry VII., and who 
built the great bridge that still spans the 
Avon, on the Oxford high-road. She was 
seen also at the Shakespeare birthplace in 
Henley street, where the Misses Chataway 
welcomed her as an old friend. But for 
the most part she remained in seclusion, 
awaiting what was felt to be a serious pro- 
fessional ordeal. All about the town mean- 
while her professional associates dispersed 



MARY ANDERSON. 83 

themselves, to view the relics of the great 
poet and to " fleet the time merrily, as they 
did in the golden age." Stratford can sel- 
dom have been as gay as it was during these 
two or three days; never surely was it 
gayer. From London came down a large A P ress 

j . . deputation 

deputation of journalists. The trains brought from London, 
many an eager throng from the teeming 
hotels of sprightly Leamington. One party 
of twenty-five Americans came in from the 
sylvan hamlet of Broadway. Visitors to 
Trinity Church found that flowers had been FIowers 
scattered upon the gravestone of Shake- strewn on 
speare and upon the slabs that cover the Shake - 

speare' s 

dust of his wife and daughter. When the tomb, 
day of the performance came a bright sun 
and a soft breeze made the old town brill- 
iant and balmy, and but for the falling 
leaves and the bare aspect of field and 
meadow there was no hint that summer 
had passed. A more distinguished or a Adistin- 
more judicious audience than was assem- Science, 
bled in the Memorial Theatre could not be 
wished and has not often been seen. Mr. 
Forbes Robertson, an intellectual and grace- 
ful actor, thoughtful in spirit and polished 
in method, began the performance, coming 
on as Orlando. No performer other than 



84 MARY ANDERSON. 

Miss Anderson, however, could expect to 
attract especial notice on this night. It 
MissAnder- was for ner tnat tne audience reserved its 
son plays enthusiasm, and this, when at length she 
S'fimliml a PP eared as Rosalind, burst forth in vocifer- 
in her life. ous plaudits and cheers, so that it was long 
before the familiar voice, so copious, reso- 
nant, and tender, rolled out its music upon 
the eager throng and her action could pro- 
ceed. Before the night ended she was called 
eight times before the curtain, and she was 
cheered with a warmth of enthusiasm unu- 
sual in this country. 
Analysis of The nature of Rosalind is intended to 
the character combine a tender heart with a fanciful and 
sparkling mind. The salient and obvious 
attribute to her character is archness ; but 
the archness plays over gentleness and 
strength. Her mood is usually merry and 
she loves to trifle ; but, while she teases the 
object of her secret passion, she always 
does this in a thoroughly kind and good- 
natured manner. Her nerves are finely 
braced; her intellect is alert; her wit is 
incessantly nimble, and she shoots the 
arrows of her raillery in all directions. Yet 
she is quick to pity and to help ; her love is 
profoundly affectionate, her thought always 



of Rosalind. 



MARY ANDERSON. 85 

generous and noble. Gentleness and pa- Archness 
tience are ascribed to her even by her veU j°s 

J tenderness. 

enemy, and it is particularly noted that all 
the people praise her for her virtues. There 
is no boldness in Rosalind, beyond the out- 
side show of defiant resolution. Inwardly i 
she shrinks from all offence, with the sensi- ' ! 
bility of a timid maiden. She can dazzle, 
but also she can melt. Not without a spe- 
cial and significant design has the poet 
surrounded this blooming figure with the 
opulent foliage, teeming life, brisk winds 
and rustic freedom of the Forest of Arden. 
Not without meaning has he made her to 
be extolled and beloved by so many and 
such good and true hearts. Celia loves her. 
Orlando, one of Shakespeare's sanest and 
soundest men, is immediately captivated by 
her. The wise Touchstone — laughing at AuniversaI 
himself and life and all the world — is favourite, 
always tender of this wayward princess. 
Through her first interview with Orlando 
there shines a wistful, tremulous earnestness, 
a half-grieved, half-doubting, almost child- 
like meekness, that is irresistibly winning. 
In her just and high resentment of the 
Duke Frederick's cruel sentence of banish- 
ment, there is a perfectly royal pride. And 



86 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Brave and 
cheerful. 



Love a 
necessity to 
Rosalind. 



The natural 
and the 
assumed 



when at length she turns to the unknown 
wilderness and the adventurous quest of 
fortune, it is with the cheerful buoyancy of 
a pure heart, the elasticity of a fresh and 
ardent mind, and that golden spirit of the 
imagination which, while it conjures up the 
pathway of exile, only brightens it with the 
sunshine of hope. Here, surely, if anywhere 
in Shakespeare, are commingled the tender- 
ness and the splendour which man adores 
in woman. 

At the outset of the play of "As You Like 
It," Rosalindas nature has reached that 
period of a woman's development when, 
unconsciously to herself, love has become a 
necessity. Her merry question to Celia, 
" What think you of falling in love ? " is 
more than playful, for it is the involuntary 
sign of what is passing in the secret depths 
of her heart. That heart is full of passionate 
tenderness, hungry for the right object on 
which to bestow itself; and its owner is dis- 
turbed by this without knowing why. She 
is a little saddened with trouble, also, be- 
cause of her father's exile and her uncle's 
aversion, — which latter fact her keen, 
womanlike intuition would not fail to 
divine, — and she veils herself behind a 



MARY ANDERSON. 



87 



gleeful manner, natural to her, but not now 
entirely genuine. " I show more mirth than 
I am mistress of." Miss Anderson's denote- 
ment of this mood was not less firm than 
delicate, and it evinced a subtle instinct of 
truth. Tall, regal, faultlessly beautiful, clad 
in a rich, simple robe of flowered gold, b ^iftd 
cheerful in demeanour, but earnest with a appearance 
sweet, thoughtful gravity, she gave an in- ^^J 
stantaneous impression of the royal state, Rosalind. 
the exuberant physical vitality, the finely 
poised intellect, and the affectionate, sen- 
sitive, variable, exultant temperament that 
constitute Rosalind. Her change from pen- 
sive pre-occupation to arch levity was made 
with charming grace ; and at the close of 
the wrestling-match she had shown that the 
character was easily within her grasp. Upon 
first seeing Orlando this Rosalind became 
instantly attentive; and after their first 
colloquy, as she turned away, saying, " Pray 
Heaven I be deceived in you ! " her back- 
ward look upon him, intense and full of 
sweet wonder and incipient fondness, told 
that fate had already spoken, and that love 
would soon be in full possession of her 
heart. Miss Anderson introduced new Newtr f"- 

. ment of the 

"business" for the embellishment of the wrestling. 



88 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Felicitous 
stage-busi- 



A fine 
moment of 
tragic force. 



wrestling contest. The custom prevalent 
at court games in Europe since the usage 
was first established by the ancient Greeks 
of awarding to the victor a wreath of ivy or 
of laurel, or a palm-branch, was followed in 
this instance, and it became instrumental 
in a touching effect at the moment when 
Rosalind gives her chain to Orlando. Those 
judges who observe the significant force of 
appropriate details in a dramatic perform- 
ance could not miss being charmed with 
this stroke of thoughtful art. In bestowing 
her gift Rosalind dropped the chain slowly 
into the extended left hand of Orlando — 
slowly because with a lingering grasp of it, 
as though she would caress the hand into 
which it fell — while he, already enslaved 
by her radiant and bewildering beauty, 
suffered his victorious wreath to drop un- 
heeded to the ground. Miss Anderson's 
bearing was nobly impressive in the subse- 
quent interview with the angry and hostile 
Duke Frederick; and her superb delivery 
of the resentful speech, "Treason is not 
inherited, my lord," — her stately figure 
towering in affluent power, and her fiery 
spirit blazing forth in vehement indig- 
nation, — created a perfect illusion and for 



MARY ANDERSON. 

one electrical moment set forth the con- 
summate image of tragic majesty. Miss 
Anderson's sudden repression of this right- 
eous anger, upon the thought of Celia whom 
Rosalind loves, was not the least of the 
beauties of this treatment. In the ensuing 
plot of adventurous exile her glowing 
animal spirits, eager self-reliance, and merry 
almost jocund humour asserted themselves 
with charming effect. The exit, made in a 
burst of gladness, was followed by delighted 
applause — calling her twice before the 
audience after the curtain fell. 

The irresistible fascination and the ex- 
ultant free spirit of Rosalind are not, how- ^eTboT 
ever, fully disclosed until she has put on her dress, 
boy's dress and dashed into the joyous 
freedom of the woods. The treatment that 
Miss Anderson would accord to this aspect 
of the character was awaited with eager 
interest. It is toward the end of the day 
when, in this artist's management of "As 
You Like It," Rosalind and her compan- 
ions, Celia and Touchstone, come wandering 
into the forest of Arden. A soft sunset 
light streams through the woods, and you pi ^? 
can almost hear the low murmur of the 
brook and the anxious, plaintive note of the 



89 



Rosalind in 



9 o 



MARY ANDERSON. 



birds that call their mates to rest. The song 
of the Duke's foresters, returning from the 
chase, is faintly heard at distance, dying 
away in the shadowy woodland glades. 
Upon this lovely rustic scene, enchanted 
with the soft influences of the falling night, 
the exiled Rosalind and her co-mates in 
travel made their weary entrance, almost 
worn out with fatigue, and listless with long 
endurance. Miss Anderson was not now to 
play a boy's part for the first time. Play- 
goers of New York have not forgotten her 
essay in Ion (January 3, 1881), at the Fifth 
Avenue Theatre, nor the grace, refinement 
and nobility of feeling and demeanour with 
which she filled that character. Her per- 
sonality in Rosalind was equally free, 
MissAnder- natura i an( j re fined, less classic, or not 

son s Gany- ' # ' 

mede dress, classic at all, and still more beautiful. No 
prettier Rosalind dress could be desired. 
A russet " doublet and hose," the sleeves 
of the former slashed with white puffs, a soft 
leather jerkin, long boots, a shapely velvet 
hat, a dark red mantle thrown carelessly 
around the body and carried with easy neg- 
ligence, a kirtle-axe for the hip and a boar- 
spear for the hand made up this garb ; and 
never was poetic gipsy raiment worn with 



of the actress. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

more bewitching grace. Rosalindas first boy 
scene gives to her but little opportunity. Expressh 
Deft and expressive dramatic touches were points, 
made by Miss Anderson, at " Doublet and 
hose ought to show itself courageous to 
petticoat," and at "Alas, poor shepherd, 
searching of thy wound, I have by hard 
adventure found my own." The sense of 
humour and the knowledge of human nature 
here indicated on the part of the actress 
were remarkable : nor could a thoughtful Personal 
observer fail to remark, in this scene, — what a ^ tocrac y 
indeed was characteristic of Miss Anderson's 
bearing throughout the impersonation, — an 
innate aristocratic superiority, the natural 
attribute of a princess. She rounded and 
closed this passage, in an expressive exit, 
with an assumption of spirit and strength 
very human and tender, almost pathetic, in 
its cheer and encouragement for the weary 
comrades of her pilgrimage. 

When Rosalind is next seen a few days 
may be supposed to have passed. There is 
no more fatigue now, and there will be no 
more real trouble. It is bright daylight, 
and the adventurous youth, as assumed by 
Miss Anderson, came rambling aimlessly 
through the forest, singing as he strode. 



9i 



9 2 

New and 
commend- 
able use of the 
introduced 
song. 



A wonderful 
voice. 



Rosalind in- 
standy aware 
of the iden- 
tity of her 
rhymester. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

Usually the song, "When daisies pied and 
violets blue " (from" Love's Labour's Lost "), 
is introduced at a later stage of the repre- 
sentation of " As You Like it " (act iv. 
scene i), and is given as a musical feature or 
vocal exploit. Miss Anderson, on the con- 
trary, invested Rosalind with a mingled 
mood, suggesting the spontaneous enjoy- 
ment of rich physical vitality just a little 
subdued by pensive pre-occupation. Her 
voice, sweetly melodious and deeply sympa- 
thetic, — the richest, grandest woman voice 
to be heard in these days from the dramatic 
stage, — was audible before she entered ; and 
she gave the song only in part and as an 
incident. When she came into view she 
was lounging, and the song was continued 
by her till she had noticed Orlando's paper 
hung upon a tree, and had taken it down 
and glanced with an air of momentary 
bewilderment and puzzled surprise at its 
contents. Then her voice slowly died away. 
The felicity of this treatment — the obvious 
touch of nature — can be mentioned only 
to be praised. Miss Anderson made Rosa- 
lind almost instantly cognisant, by intui- 
tion, of the source of the versified tribute; 
and during the subsequent colloquy with 



MARY ANDERSON. 



93 



Celia her bearing was that of a delighted 
lover who guards her own delicious secret 
beneath an assumption of indifference, and 
only waits to be told what she is already- 
enraptured to know. The start, at u What 
shall I do with my doublet and hose ? " was 
made with a precipitate access of confusion, 
in the sudden remembrance of an awkward 
predicament which the tumult of her pleas- 
ure had hitherto caused her to forget. 
Throughout the ensuing scene with Orlando 
Miss Anderson delighted the listener, alike 
with the exuberance of her glee and the 
incessant felicity with which she denoted 
the tenderness that it only half conceals. 
At the question, archly enough uttered but 
seriously meant : " Are you so much in love vened iove. 
as your rhymes speak ? " her pretty action 
of pressing her hand to her bosom, where 
those rhymes were hidden, may be named 
as a special excellence of treatment; and 
when Orlando, who has turned away from 
his questioner, answers sadly, " Neither 
rhyme nor reason can express how much," 
her acted caress, which is very nearly de- 
tected by him, giving her the pretext for an 
arch transition, becomes charmingly elo- 
quent and illuminative of Rosalindas nature. 



Subtle 
expression of 



£4 MARY ANDERSON. 

"A swashing The reproof scene, with Silvius and Phoebe, 

and a martial wag carr i e d w i t h a g 00( J assumption of 

manly swagger and with a surprising variety 
of intonation and of dramatic embellish- 
ment in the use of the text. The sterner 
critics of Rosalind, who stand fast for ancient 
usage, thought that they saw here an excess 
of the element of frolic, and that the tone 
of the part was lowered. I do not recall 
any performer of Rosalind who gave the 
mirth of this passage in a more human and 
natural manner, or so as to impart a greater 
pleasure. Frequent repetition of the part 
will enable Miss Anderson to strengthen it 
in unity, to sustain it evenly at the highest 
byrepetition. elevation of womanlike sentiment, to carry 
it with incessant and invariable dash and 
sparkle, and to conceal every vestige of a 
personal consciousness of artistic intention 
and method. There is no comedy part 
more difficult. For a first performance of 
Rosalind her work was a marvel, alike of 
ideal and execution. Only genius could 
have prompted the assumption of that sweet 
ecstasy of triumph with which, amid all her 
glee, she contrived to irradiate the scene of 
the mock marriage. In the swoon scene 
she was easily victorious, using all at once 



Symmetry 
and smooth- 
ness to come 



MARY ANDERSON. g$ 

those characteristic tragical means so en- Tragical 
tirely at her command. No dramatic voice effe " and 

J pathos. 

that ever spoke the line " I would I were 
at home " has imparted to it such pathos as 
it had when it fell from her lips y and when 
at last this peerless creature, clad in spot- 
less white and dazzling in the superb beauty 
of her auspicious youth, stood forth to part 
the tangled skein of destiny and so wind up 
the piece, it seemed for one instant as if a 
spirit had alighted upon the earth. Such a 
vision comes but seldom, and it should not shake- 
be hailed with cold and common words. I s P eare ' s 

own words 

thought of what the great magician himself applied as a 
has said : tribute - 

Women will love her, that she is more worth 
Than any man ; men, that she is 
The rarest of all women. 

To-day (August 30) Miss Anderson left 
Stratford, aboard a special train for Leeds. 
Her dramatic company went by the same MissAnder- 
express. There was a crowd at the station son star * s on 
and the actress was loudly cheered as her cial tour ^j 
carriage left the platform. Many of her her voyage 
personal friends, American as well as Eng- 
lish, were present to say farewell. Miss 
Anderson visits in succession Leeds, Edin- 



9 6 



MARY ANDERSON. 



burgh, Glasgow, and Dublin, playing one 
week in each of those cities, and she will 
then embark aboard the " Gallia" at Queens- 
town, September 27, and sail for America. 
The cast with which "As You Like It" 
has here been produced shows the constitu- 
tion of the dramatic company with which 
she will traverse the American cities. The 
stage manager is Mr. Napier Lothian, jr. 
The musical director is Mr. Andrew Levey, 
of London. Miss Anderson's personal rep- 
resentative is Mr. Charles J. Abud, late 
of the London Lyceum Theatre. The 
comedy was cast as follows : Duke, in exile, 
Like it." Mr. Henry Vernon; Duke Frederick, Mr. 
Sidney Hayes ; Jacques, Mr. F. H. Macklin ; 
Amiens, Mr. Wilson; Le Beau, Mr. Arthur 
Lewis ; Charles, the Wrestler, Mr. V. Henry ; 
Oliver, Mr. Joseph Anderson; Jacques-le- 
Bois, Mr. Gillespie; Orlando, Mr. Forbes 
Robertson; Adam, Mr. Kenneth Black; 
Touchstone, Mr. J. G. Taylor; Corin, Mr. 
Sainsbury; Silvius, Mr. Bindloss; William, 
Mr. Gay tie; Celia, Miss Tilbury; Phoebe, 
Miss Ander- Miss Calvert ; Audrey, Mrs. Billington. The 
son's own stage version of the comedy that is used by 
ofTe^ 1011 Miss Anderson is one that she has made 
comedy. for herself. It does not restore the original 



The cast of 
"As You 



MARY ANDERSON. 97 

form of the piece, and it cuts some portions 
of the text. Hymen and his verses, together 
with parts of the shepherd talk, are discarded. 
Touchstone has been pruned. The speeches 
of the First Lord are still allotted to 
Jacques — as, indeed, seems an inevitable 
necessity. Miss Anderson spoke the epi- 
logue — a piece of fustian, unworthy of ; a y^n dw 
Shakespeare, which has always been a blot play, 
upon the pure poetic beauty of the play. 
Mr. Forbes Robertson deeply pleased by 
his performance of Orlando. He has grace, 
earnestness, sentiment, character, and his 
method is thoughtful and delicate. 

The gain, above expenses, of this benefit 
performance, was one hundred pounds. It 
is the intention of Mr. Charles E. Flower, Results of 
the public-spirited director of the Shake- ^J^^ce 
speare Memorial Theatre, to use this money at Stratford. 
for the purchase of two marble tablets 
which are needed to complete the decora- 
tion of the front of the building. One of 
these, emblematic of Comedy, will present 
a scene from " As You Like It," and in this 
the image of Miss Anderson's lovely Rosa- 
lind will be perpetuated where first it was re- 
vealed. The other, emblematic of Tragedy, 
will present the grave-yard scene from 
6 



9 8 



Purposed 
decoration of 
the Memorial 
Theatre. 



An example 
that should 
be followed. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

" Hamlet." History, typified by the scene, 
in " King John," between Hubert and 
Prince Arthur, already adorns the theatre 
front, filling a niche in the centre. Designs 
for the companion pieces exist. When these 
have been placed the exterior of the 
Memorial will be completed. Suitable dec- 
oration of the theatre and the embellish- 
ment of the adjacent grounds upon the 
bank of Avon will then remain to be 
accomplished. Miss Anderson, playing at 
this theatre and for its benefit, and acting 
Rosalind for the first time, has done herself 
honour in a professional sense, has rendered 
a generous service to a worthy institution, 
and has set an example of practical liberality 
which, perhaps, will not be lost upon other 
eminent leaders of the stage. To Shake- 
speare all such actors have owed, and must 
ever owe in great measure, their prosperity 
and renown — for it was he who made the 
ladder upon which they climb. Surely they 
ought to seize with pride and pleasure the 
opportunity of perfecting a noble monument 
to his memory, which likewise will prove a 
continual means of cultivation and happi- 
ness, upon the hallowed soil of his birthplace 
and his tomb. 



Ill 

ROSALIND IN NEW YORK 




he return of Miss Mary Ander- October 13, 

son to the American stage was l88s " 
made last night at the Star 
Theatre, and was hailed by a 

great audience with feelings of pride and Miss 
pleasure. Miss Anderson came forward as n erson . 

■r reappears in 

Rosalind, in Shakespeare's comedy of " As New York. 
You Like It," acting this part for the first 
time in America, and thus presenting herself 
in a realm of art and a line of character 
entirely different from those with which she 
has hitherto been identified in the public 
mind. It is seldom that such a strong im- 
pulse is afforded to popular emotion and to 
critical interest as that which pervaded this 
remarkable occasion. Endeared to the 
American people through their knowledge 
of her noble bearing and her signal pro- 



I0 MARY ANDERSON. 

fessional triumphs across the sea, and long 
The good- since precious to them for her brilliant 
American 6 m i n( -l> ner exemplary simplicity and sweet- 
audience, ness of character, and her aspiring and 
dignified professional career, Miss Anderson 
would have been greeted with honest glad- 
ness and active sympathy, whatever had 
been her choice of a vehicle of reentrance. 
When she left her home two years ago 
(May, 1883), she went forth crowned with 
good wishes and " golden opinions " and 
cheered onward by confident prophecy — 
which has been more than fulfilled — of 
„ . artistic conquest and true success. Her 

Her return is n 

welcomed. return is a momentous event in the experi- 
ence of the American stage and the American 
theatrical public, and by itself, in any of 
the old characters, it would have sufficed to 
draw together a numerous and representa- 
tive assemblage. To come back as the most 
delicious feminine creation of the greatest 
of poets was to exceed expectancy and 
to freight the fair occasion with a lavish 
plenitude of delight. The eager audience 
recognised this golden excess and honoured 
it in a spirit worthy of such an hour and 
well befitting this capital. It is not the 
American way to give reluctant welcome 



MARY ANDERSON. 



IOI 



even to a stranger : how much less to the 
cherished favourite whom heart and judg- 
ment alike have approved and accepted! 
Miss Anderson, when first she entered as 
Rosalind, was hailed with cheer after cheer, 
and for a long time the movement of the 
play had to pause. Not for many a day 
has public good-will made such a manifes- 
tation of itself in a theatre, and never was 
there a better reason for it. 

A production of the comedy of "As You 
Like It," if suitably accomplished, should 
liberate the spectator from that tyranny of 
the commonplace which is the usual con- 
dition of human existence and lure him into 
a land of dreams and fancies, " far from the 
madding crowd's ignoble strife." But this 
play is so completely saturated with the 
more evanescent quality of poetry that a 
perfectly adequate presentation of it in every 
particular — a presentation entirely accord- 
ant with its spirit — is perhaps impracticable. 
The work seems simple enough, and it 
ought to be easy to define and convey its 
charm. Yet something subtle at the heart 
of it constantly eludes the analytic touch. 
While, however, the nature of its power 
remains mysterious, there can be no doubt 



The spirit of 
a memorable 
night. 



Influence 
and effect of 
"As You 
Like It." 



Subtle 
poetry of the 

comedy. 



102 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Should be 
acted with 
feeling and 
freedom. 



The English 
pastoral 
scenery is 
employed. 



of the nature of its influence. It transfigures 
common life, and it swathes every object 
and every thought in a golden haze of 
romance. Drifted on its current the im- 
agination floats away, like the wild-flower 
on the autumn brook, in aimless and in- 
dolent happiness. It is essentially a play 
to be enjoyed and not to be studied ; and 
surely the right acting of it requires, of all 
things else, that the players having formed 
and tested and justified their plan, with not 
too rigid respect for the actual, should give 
a free way to their poetic feeling, and, as 
far as possible, invest the piece with its own 
pastoral glamour. Things do not fall out 
in real life as they fall out in this comedy. 
Rosalindas airy exploit must not be tried by 
the test of probability. No lioness ranges 
the woods of France. We are in Arden; 
but all around us are the great elms, and 
verdurous meadows, and tangled wild- 
flowers, and fragrant summer airs of beautiful 
Warwickshire. The piece is full of charac- 
ter, truth, wisdom, and deep and sweet 
feeling, but its entire substance is treated 
with the caprice of a poet's fancy. As we 
ramble through these woodland dells we 
shall hear the mingled voices of philosophy, 



MARY ANDERSON. 



I03 



folly, and humour, the flying echo of the 
hunter's horn, the soft music of the lover's 
lute, and the tinkle of the shepherd's bell. 
The sun shines always in the Forest of 
Arden ; the brooks sing as they glide ; and 
the soft, happy laughter of the sweetest of impediments 
all women floats gaily on the scented sum- ^ trical 
mer wind. It is no wonder that a theatrical performance, 
performance should fall somewhat short of 
sustaining this illusion. Yet the theatrical , 
performance, however imperfect, revives a 
delicious subject and imparts a momentary 
freedom and joy — the forgetfulness of 
common life, the blissful realisation of an 
ideal world. Even to approximate to ex- 
cellence in the treatment of this comedy is 
therefore to confer a public benefit. Miss 
Anderson has accomplished more than an 
ordinary revival of "As You Like It"; for, 
while treating each detail of the work in a Miss 
spirit of fine intelligence and sympathy, she Ander ^ on ' s 
has reproduced the character of J?osa/md, f Rosalind. 
with admirable art, with all the physical 
beauty that the part implies, and with all 
its soul of tender womanhood, all its rich 
vitality of changing emotion, its strength 
of mind, its starlight of sentiment, its glan- 
cing raillery, and its exuberant mirth. Old 



io4 



Rosalinds of 
the past 



Nisbett, 
Ellen Tree, , 
Helen 
Faucit, 
Adelaide 
Neilson. . 



Miss Ander- 
son makes 
Rosali7id a 
deep-hearted 
woman. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

play-goers, doubtless, can recall Rosalinds, 
of the Dora Jordan order, who invested the 
character with carnal appetite and a semi- 
dissolute air of reckless revelry ; experienced 
stagers who knew much more of the world 
than it is wholesome to know; elderly 
experts, entirely proficient in theatrical 
mechanism. There have been noble and 
winning embodiments of Rosalind, likewise, 
which are not to be forgotten or discredited. 
Nobody doubts that Mrs. Nisbett was 
delicious in it ; or that Ellen Tree presented 
it in stately and lissom beauty; or that 
Helen Faucit acted it with nobility and 
sweetness, and with her characteristic spir- 
itual exaltation. The late Adelaide Neilson 
was charming in it — only she divested 
it of serious attributes and turned it to 
frolic. But Miss Anderson has shown her- 
self incomparable as an image of the superb 
beauty of Rosalind; while no previous per- 
former of the part, in our stage annals, has 
indicated what this artist makes the vital 
and dominant fact, that underneath her 
mischief, her pretty swagger, her nimble 
satire, and her silver playfulness, Rosalind 
is an affectionate, passionate woman, as 
deep-hearted as Juliet, though different in 



MARY ANDERSON. 



I0 5 



temperament and mentality, as fond and 
clinging as Viola, and as constant as Imogen. 
Because the comedy is poetical, there 
has ever been a tendency in critical com- 
ment to over-freight it with meaning, and 
especially to surcharge the elusive character 
of Rosalind with vagueness and subtleties. 
Yet poetry is the exact reverse of com- 
plexity, and there can be but one true ideal 
of this character — instantly visible when 
Shakespeare's text is subjected to the highest 
and most obvious interpretation it will bear. 
Miss Anderson, with the simple, frank, No forced 1 
straightforward judgment characteristic of j„ te te ^° / 
her mind, has turned away from all subtle- don. 
ties of construction, and taken the straight 
path. Shakespeare's method in delineating 
his women is almost invariably to cause 
expression of character under the influence 
of love. " Man's love," said Byron, " is of 
man's life a thing apart — 'tis woman's whole 
existence." Shakespeare had already imaged 
a kindred thought. His men, that really 
love, — not like Henry V. or Benedick, but 
like Romeo and Othello, — are men that 
have something of the woman in them; 
while most of his women would be nothing 
if they were not lovers. Each of them 
6* 



io6 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Shake- 
speare's 
women 
differently- 
affected by 
the same 
sovereign 
passion. 



Rosalind an 

irresistible 

woman. 



loves, and each of them shows a different 
nature under the stress of the sovereign 
passion. Viola, hopeless and patient, will 
let concealment prey upon her life. Helena, 
made of stronger fibre, will palter with 
unchastity to win her happiness in love's 
fulfilment. Juliet will have love or death, 
and she is never so happy or so great as 
when she plunges the dagger into her heart. 
Imogen will bare her fond bosom to every 
storm of hardship and cruelty, exultant in 
simple fidelity and adoration. Rosalind 
also loves, and she could suffer, and she 
would be true : but she would do no des- 
perate deed, and she would come at last to 
live in the mind more than in. the heart. 
Her resources of mentality are not less 
strong than brilliant. But Rosalind was 
born for victory, not defeat ; and when she 
wishes to conquer love she will be so en- 
chanting that all the perfumed airs around 
her beauteous head will stir and whisper 
with the rustle of his coming wings. To 
act Rosalind rightly is to assume this con- 
dition in Shakespeare's play. Miss Ander- 
son has seen this, and has done it. 

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in signing his most 
superb portrait of Sarah Siddons, wrote his 



MARY ANDERSON. 



107 



delicate 
touches. 



name upon the hem of her garment. It is Beauty of 
often in the light and delicate touches that 
an actor discloses the keen faculty of per- 
ception, the gentle and right feeling, and! 
the unerring instinct of taste which are such 
admirable and charming attributes to the 
artistic nature. Miss Anderson has lavished 
upon her performance of Rosalind the most 
affectionate care as to detail and finish. 
More than any previous representative of 
Rosalind that our stage has disclosed, this 
actress expresses the noble pride and the 
shrinking, sensitive modesty of a true 
woman who truly loves. " My pride fell 
with my fortunes" is not a truth about ^ os f ind 

J m both proud 

Rosalind — ■. it is only an excuse. She is as and tender. 
proud as she is tender, and the love with 
which she honours and hallows Orlando, 
though ardent and generous, is dominated 
by a strong character, active morality, and 
fine intellect. Miss Anderson shows this 
equally by temperament and art. In her 
impersonation the atmosphere of the charac- 
ter, like the fragrance of the rose, surrounds 
it and explains it. This Rosalind has not Miss Ander- 
put on male attire as one of Moliere's son ' su f eof 

x . m . the male 

dissolute heroines might have put it on, for attu . e . 
the purpose of an intrigue or a frolic^ but 



io8 



MARY ANDERSON. 



The fine use 
of trans- 
parency. 



as a disguise beneath which she may protect 
her changed and menaced state, and per- 
haps retrieve her fallen fortune; and once 
being in this disguise she will make use of 
her opportunity, as best she may, to test 
the depth and sincerity of the love that she 
has inspired, and in which her great, pure, 
tender heart both trembles and exults. Miss 
Anderson struck the key-note of her im- 
personation, and disclosed her true and 
subtle perception of the beautiful quality of 
transparency in acting, — the device that lets 
the deeper feeling and interior condition of 
the heart glimmer forth through the veil 
of an assumed or a more superficial mood, — 
when, in saying to Orlando, " Sir, you have 
wrestled well, and — overthrown more than 
your enemies," she made the last words a 
speech " aside " and to him inaudible. The 
sweet woman-nature thus denoted is un- 
doubtedly at the heart of Shakespeare's 
ideal. With this ideal the whole of Miss 
Anderson's impersonation is level and har- 

„ „ monious. Her Rosalind is neither a sensual 

Her Rosa- 
lind denned, rake nor a flippant hoyden; nor, on the 

other hand, is it in the least degree sug- 
gestive of an insipid prude : it is a noble, 
brilliant, pure, lovely woman, glorious in 



MARY ANDERSON. 



109 



the affluent vitality of her beautiful youth, 
and enchanting in the healthful, gleeful, 
sparkling freedom of her bright mind and 
her happy heart. 

It is only six weeks since, at Stratford 
in England, in the Shakespeare Memorial 
Theatre, Miss Anderson acted Rosalind for 
the first time in her life. Throughout the Ranges in 

the perform- 

representation last night her acting dis- ancc 
played only this difference, that in the 
masquerade scenes it had more dash and 
sparkle, and that it derived additional 
fluency, all along its line, from a more 
effectual concealment of the expedients of 
art. The vague stirring of love in the heart 
of Rosalind, — which she herself does not 
understand, — the unrestful mood, the sad- 
ness which is due to her regretful percep- 
tion of her unfortunate circumstances, the 
show of mirth which would be natural 
under happy conditions but which now is a A su erb 
little forced, the condition of being Rosalind woman, 
and not of acting a part, the abundant, 
healthful vitality, the finely poised mind, 
the tenderness, the sweetly grave tempera- 
ment, the royal superiority, which yet is 
touched with a submissive meekness, — 
these attributes were all again crystallized 



no 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Suggestion 
of previous 
life. 



"When 
daisies pied 
and violets 
blue." 



into a lovely image of young and blooming 
womanhood. The Princess, as it chances 
in this play, has been but slightly mentioned 
before she enters : in the acting version she 
commonly is not mentioned at all. Her 
coming, therefore, is a little abrupt. Miss 
Anderson did not fail to evince her con- 
sciousness that every character has its back- 
ground of previous life. Her entrance as 
Rosalind was in the continuance of a con- 
dition of being, and not the beginning of it. 
The change from pensive pre-occupation to 
arch levity told at once its story of sorrow 
sweetly veiled and of a deep nature under- 
neath the laugh. The troubled wonder in 
the backward look at Orlando was eloquent 
equally of celestial purity and latent human 
passion. Nothing could be more expressive 
of Rosalind's ardour and delicacy than Miss 
Anderson's graceful action with the chain. 
The fine burst of filial resentment, suddenly 
curbed by the solicitude of friendship, when 
Rosalind defends her banished father, had 
its legitimate effect of power. In the boy's 
dress it was found that a royal nature never 
ceases to be royal. The original and right 
use of the song ("When daisies pied"), 
making it the spontaneous overflow of joy 



MARY ANDERSON. ni 

in the heart of a healthful, happy girl, was 
felt to be one of those deft touches of nature 
which show the finest instinct of art. All 
through the forest scenes with Orlando Miss 
Anderson makes Rosalind repress, beneath 
frolic and banter, the passion that longs to 
speak. The furtive caress is indicative of Thefurtive 

caress and 

the spint of the performance. In the re- its meaning, 
proof of Phoebe the almost jocular mirth 
was equally natural. The pathos in the 
swoon scene springs out of the under-tide 
of earnestness that has preceded it. The 
final entrance of the Princess, in her bridal 
garments of spotless white, presented an 
image of dazzling loveliness. Miss Ander- 
son spoke the epilogue for the first time T1 ^ ebad - 

x x epilogue is 

since her performance at Stratford. In part discarded, 
spurious, and in all a tawdry, uncouth piece 
of writing, that epilogue ought long since 
to have been discarded. It is inharmonious 
with Rosalind's character, and it never had 
any effect beyond that of taking the actress 
out of the part and the picture, and degrad- 
ing her to the level of a coarse taste. Miss 
Anderson now closes the piece with a dance. 
The foes are reconciled; the lovers are 
mated; and while the woods are ringing 
with music, and every face is shining with 



112 



Quality of 
spiritual 
freedom in 
the actress. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

happiness, the curtain falls upon a scene of 
sylvan beauty and " true delights." 

In the presence of a work of art thus 
luminous with the authentic fire of genius, 
and thus resplendent against a rich back- 
ground of such thought and feeling as con- 
stitute the highest and finest experience, it 
seems desirable that something more should 
be set down than simply the record of it, or 
the mere cold description of its attributes 
and its effect. The quality that most of all 
commends Miss Anderson to sympathy and 
admiration — more especially of those ob- 
servers who, through experience and suffer- 
ing, have learned to know the world and to 
place something like a right estimate upon 
human life — is her spiritual freedom. Care 
has not laid its leaden hand upon her heart. 
Grief has not stained the whiteness of her 
spirit. The galling fetters of convention 
have not crippled her life. Accumulated 
burdens of error and folly have not arrived 
to deaden her enthusiasm and imbitter her 
mind. Disappointment has not withered 
for her the bloom of ambition or blighted 
the smile upon the face of hope. Time, with 
its insidious and saddening touch, has not 
yet curbed for her the starry visions of pur- 



MARY ANDERSON. 



113 



pose or the joyous tumult of action. Satiety 
and monotony have not made a desert round 
her path. But still for her the birds of morn- 

,, j 1 •-, , Happiness of 

ing sing in the summer woods, while her her f ^ te and 
footsteps fall, not on the faded leaves of loss condition. 
and sorrow, but on the blown roses of youth 
and joy. Strong in noble and serene woman- 
hood, untouched by either the evil or the 
sordid, unwholesome dulness of contiguous 
lives, not secure through penury of feeling 
and not imperilled through reckless drift of 
emotion, rich equally in mental gifts and 
physical equipments, this favoured creature 
is the living fulfilment of the old poetic ideal 
of gipsy freedom and classic grace. Byron " Egeria." 
saw it, in his " Egeria." Wordsworth saw it, 
in his " Phantom of Delight." Seldom have 
human eyes beheld it in actual human form. 
Yet is it one of the richest and grandest pos- 
sibilities of existence. Once, at the outset, 
comes to every human soul the opportunity necked 
of its choice. Here at least is one being by evil or 
who has chosen well. Every emanation of foolishch °i ce 

. . . . of conduct at 

her art is eloquent of innate royal supen- the outset of 
ority. Whatever its walk of life might be, life - 
such a nature, it is easy to perceive, would 
still keep its imperial dominance, equally of 
its circumstances and itself. The success 



U4 



Noble in 
herself. 



The lesson 
of her 
personality. 



The music of 
"As You 
Like It" 



MARY ANDERSON. 

of Miss Anderson is not the accident of 
superficial beauty and frivolous caprice. Her 
art is noble, but her self is more noble than 
her art. Great in her achievements and 
greater still in her nature, the presence of 
such a woman touches, in many and many 
a heart, that chord of sorrow which vibrates 
back to the error that lost the world. Each 
of her performances gives its special revela- 
tion of genius and imparts its special and 
peculiar charm; but, higher and better than 
all her works, because a stately and splendid 
monition to the soul and not merely a 
superb delight to the sense, abides the 
woman herself — to teach us what loveliness 
is possible in human life, and to make us 
think on the nobleness that may yet remain 
among the wastes of experience and the 
wrecks of time. 

One of the principal beauties of "As You 
Like It " is its use of plaintive song warbled 
in the ears of exiles, " under the shade of 
melancholy boughs," and expressive of the 
sad wisdom of experience, the humane ten- 
derness of a great nature toward the frailty 
of mankind — that strange, half-sad, half- 
cheerful poetry of contemplation which is 
suggested by the contrast of nature's re- 



MARY ANDERSON. 



115 



pose with man's restless, evanescent, dubious 
condition. The loss of any of this music 
seems a serious loss to the play. The por- 
tions that were given had a touching effect. 
Mr. Johnston Forbes-Robertson made his 

r ... . Mr. Forbes- 

first appearance in America, representing Robertsonas 
Orlando. The beauty of this character is Orlando. 
that it shall be invested with the affluent 
and therefore calm vitality of youthful man- 
liness, with galliard grace, and with occa- 
sional quiet and gentle drollery that plays 
over a mood of pensive pre-occupation. 
Mr. Robertson by indefinable peculiarities 
is shown to be a man of introspective intel- 
lect, pensive temperament, sombre imagina- 
tion, and a mental tendency to drift toward 
such views of life and such conditions of 
art as are more accordant with the Hamlets 
and Romeos of the drama than with the 
lighter lovers of Shakespearean comedy. 
His performance of Orlando, all the same, 
was full of right feeling expressed with in- 
cessant grace and admirable skill. His 
manly tenderness in the scene with Adam, 
his impetuosity in the first encounter with 
the exiles, his nonchalant humour in the col- 
loquy with Jacques, his good-natured, kindly, 
half-amused, half-perplexed toleration of 



Other 

associate 



U6 MARY ANDERSON. 

the mysterious, winsome boy who would be 
taken for Rosalind, and throughout the im- 
personation his air of high breeding and his 
perfect taste commended him to the public 
sympathy and laid for him the basis of a 
performers, permanent popularity. Mrs. Adeline Bil- 
lington, an actress long esteemed upon the 
English stage for her fine talents, her versa- 
tility, and her conscientious work, made also 
her first appearance here, in the rustic part 
of Audrey. Mrs. Billington has played 
higher parts and will play them again. She 
showed the true artistic spirit in giving a 
zealous presentment of this little character. 
Her humour is rich, her art discreet. Mr. 
Macklin came forward as Jacques, the sated 
libertine and world-wearied philosopher. 
This actor has dignity, sadness, and a vein 
of caustic humour. The ignoble conduct 
and the saturnine temperament of Oliver 
render him repugnant to sympathy. Mr. 
Joseph Anderson's sincerity made him for- 
midable and inspired curiosity as to the 
workings of his dark and sinister mind. 






IV 
GALATEA AND CLARICE. 




wo of Mr. W. S. Gilbert's plays, October 23. 
" Pygmalion and Galatea " and 
" Comedy and Tragedy," were 
presented last night and Miss 
Anderson acted in them, as Galatea and 
Clarice. Her Galatea furnishes a shining 
and remarkable example of what may be 
accomplished, through the medium of the 
dramatic art, when a character in itself 
slender receives the investiture of a noble 
and poetical personality. As she stands in 
the text of Mr. Gilbert's play, Galatea is defined, 
little more than a sweet and pleasing image 
of simple girlhood; but Galatea as em- 
bodied by Miss Anderson is a superb type 
equally of woman's ideal grandeur and 
woman's human loveliness. The charm that 
the actress diffuses through the character is 



HJJ MARY ANDERSON. 

that of angelic innocence pervading a pure 
and sinless but human and passionate love, 
and expressing itself in artless words and 
ways, which sometimes bring a smile to the 
lips and sometimes smite the heart with a 
parted by the su dden sense of grief and desolation. But 
actress. the meaning with which she has freighted 

the experience of Galatea is productive, for 
the character, of a power which transcends 
its charm. The meaning is the hopeless- 
ness of an ideal love or an ideal life, under 
such conditions of existence as those which 
environ the human race. Such a love may- 
be cherished in the heart ; such a life may 
be lived in the mind ; but the one can 
have no fulfilment and the other must be 
lonely and cold. In other words, the ideal 
Fulfilment of and the actual in human life are confronted 
the ideal is ^ut not conjoined. Still more, since experi- 

lmpossible in > m ± 

human life, ence is inexorably operative and must always 
bring its consequence, any practical surren- 
der to the ideal is a choice of suffering and 
perhaps of death. A great ideal love must 
destroy either itself or the being who feels 
it. True passion is not a wisp-light, it is a 
consuming flame, and either it must find 
fruition or it will burn the human heart to 
dust and ashes. There is no creature so 



MARY ANDERSON. 

lonely as the dweller in the intellect. These 
are the truths that Miss Anderson makes 
clear and impressive in her performance of 
Galatea. Within such integuments of scene 
and language as the dramatist has furnished 
she shows the soul of a great woman — a 
woman greater than this author has con- 
ceived or drawn — made glorious with an 
ideal love, convulsed by a crushing experi- 
ence of blight and grief, and finally sancti- 
fied by self-abnegation and death. Her 
Galatea is the dream of a poet, turned from 
marble into flesh and blood. Her passion 
for Pygmalion is as pure as heaven, yet ten- 
der as woman's heart. But she has come 
into a world of selfishness and sin; a 
world in which lower creatures abide and 
prevail ; a world in which everything is pre- 
empted, and in which she can have no part. 
The actual is her enemy and it repudiates 
her presence. The nature upon which she 
has set her heart, though allured to her for 
a little while, follows its innate law of self- 
ishness and falls away from her in her 
extremest need. She has no life except in 
her love. It fails her, and she must perish. 
The ideal has dashed itself against the 
actual, in a world of common natures, and 



119 



The actress 
elevates the 
character. 



Galatea 
interpreted 
as too pure 
and delicate 
for this 
world. 



The actual 
defeats the 
ideal. 



120 



MARY ANDERSON. 



it is shattered. The one mute gesture of 
supplication with which Miss Anderson 
makes this lonely and forlorn creature turn 
back once more and for the last time toward 
the man she loves has a whole life of ex- 
perience in it — a world of meaning — and 
in itself it is one of the most beautiful touches 
of dramatic art and one of the most eloquent 
and pathetic denotements of human feeling 
that have been seen. 

From the first this performance of Galatea 
has been, technically, one of Miss Ander- 
son's best works. It presented at the outset 
but few and trivial blemishes, and these 
have disappeared ; so that if it be viewed 
and meaning, simply as dramatic execution, and without 
reference to its deep, interior meaning, it is 
a delight to the faculty of taste and a joy to 
the sense of sweet and gentle humour, while 
to the love of beauty it is a supreme content- 
ment. The perfect Greek dress, the white 
loveliness of the statue, the eager, radiant 
face, the subtle suggestion of pain as well 
as rapture in the process of awakening from 
the marble, the grace of movement, the 
consummate repose, the finely modulated 
of it^ action, the honest eyes, the softly musical 
specified. voice — these attributes and graces, and 



Her perform 
ance fine in 
execution 



Artless and 



MARY ANDERSON. I2 i 

many more like these, might be named 
among its felicities of exterior and of art. 
No trace of self-consciousness mars the 
fresh bloom of the Greek girl's innocence. 
Truth is in every look and every tone. In 
reverie she has the sweetly grave manner 
and the winning, confiding helplessness of a 
child. Her horror at sight of the dead fawn 
and her terror at sight of its destroyer are 
so entirely earnest and natural that they 
create a distinct illusion and impress as 
much as they amuse. Her artlessness and 
her quief, spontaneous glee, in the comic gleeful, 
scene with Chrysos, are expressed with a 
delicious variety of elocution and made to 
communicate a rich glow of enjoyment. 
Her action and her passionate vehemence 
of supplication that Cynisca will spare Pyg- 
malion make a superb tragic picture. Her 
pathos in the closing scene has the cruel 
reality of pain, and is indeed a wonderful 
simulation of misery — not the trivial pique 
and perplexity that flow from wounded 
pride, but the utter woe of a broken heart. 
Every portion of the texture of her work is, 
to these ends, animated by a fine intelli- 
gence and finished with delicate skill. But 
she goes further than this. There is always 
7 



I2 2 MARY ANDERSON. 

in the work of a true artist that soul be- 
neath the surface which illumines the out- 
within°the ward fabric and makes it precious to all 
body of art. minds that are able to comprehend it. If 
this were not so the only possible question 
as to acting would be a question of correct- 
ness and detail; and from that point of 
view very little discussion of the subject 
would amply suffice for the public need. In 
presence of an actor who is merely skilful 
in the use of artistic expedients, the mind 
remains quiescent because the heart is un- 
touched. It cannot signify much to others 
whether such a performer executes a task 
well or ill. The charm of personality must 
shine through the mechanism. It is what 
the actor_js x far more than what the actor 
does, that conquers in the realm of the 
human mind. Miss Anderson's performances 

becret source r 

of her power. — because of her constant, healthful growth 
in a broad culture and a fine experience, and 
because of the high poetic soul, the gipsy- 
like freedom of spirit with which she is 
endowed — are remarkable for this victorious 
power, and it is upon this, their permanent 
value, that thought inclines chiefly to linger. 
In acting Galatea she has brought out more 
than all the thought that is in the play. 



MARY ANDERSON. 



123 



That irremediable wrench or warp in human 
nature which seems for ever present to the The sad 
author's mind — that incongruity, now gro- komgnmy 

1 • • 1 1 1 • i • 1 pervading 

tesque and now pitiable, which is constantly life# 
visible to him between goodness and innate 
depravity, between loveliness and the deba- 
sing influences of a corrupt world — is readily 
manifested. But it remained for this actress, 
with her sweeter perception and deeper and 
gentler insight, to give a broader application 
to elemental truths. Long ago her acting 
of Galatea gave solemn enforcement to the 
afflicting fact that affection, fidelity and self- 
sacrifice are commonly lavished on worth- M i ssAnder _ 
less natures, and that the deadliest wound son's acting. 
to love is its knowledge, when cast aside 
and forsaken, that it never was even once 
understood by the object of its worship. 
The impersonation as it now stands, while 
mournfully pathetic with this comment upon 
human life, is impressive with the loftier 
lesson that the ideal is unattainable and that 
a great nature must be sufficient to itself, 
enduring all things even unto death. That 
white marble statue, when all is over, when 
the play is ended and the heart has ceased 
to beat, — that crystal image of purity and 
truth, — is no longer now the symbol of 



124 



Galatea 
triumphant 
in death. 



Alleged 
coldness of 
Miss Ander- 
son's acting. 



The soul is 
more sacred 
than any art 



MARY ANDERSON. 

sorrow and defeat, but the emblem of a 
divine triumph. Life and love are for the 
frail and fleeting creatures of" the common 
world. No more worship of a shadow ! No 
more dependence on the shallow and fickle 
heart of man ! No more of disappointment, 
of denial, and the weary, wasting, withering 
sickness of speechless grief! Tears will 
never dim those glorious eyes, nor sorrow 
mar again the perfect peace of that celestial 
brow. Mortal life was too narrow, too weak 
and poor for that immortal spirit. The statue 
is the victor. 

It has been said of Miss Anderson that 
her acting is cold; that it is deficient of 
sentiment ; that it never touches the heart ; 
that it indicates a person of mind and mech- 
anism, but not a person of sensibility. 
Those judges who take this view of the 
subject are, doubtless, sincere in their opin- 
ion. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
see how such an opinion can prevail in the 
presence of such a performance as this. 
Surely a dignified reticence of self-respect 
may be maintained in acting, as in every- 
thing else, without the sacrifice of emotion. 
Art is noble, but the sanctity of the human 
soul is nobler yet. Miss Anderson, more 



MARY ANDERSON. 



125 



perhaps than any other woman upon the 
stage in our time, possesses and exhibits 
that fine aristocratical superiority which 
comes of innate nobleness. If there be 
any coldness in her acting, that coldness is 
here. She does not employ delirium and 
convulsion. But the performances of Galatea 
and Clarice that she gave — and gave in 
such a way as to thrill a great audience and 
beguile it of its tears as well as its enthusi- 
astic plaudits — were vital with the strongest 
and finest feeling of a true woman's heart. 

As Clarice, Miss Anderson points a strik- 
ing contrast and gives a puissant and con- 
vincing evidence of her artistic power. 
Galatea is ideal. Clarice is actual. And The play of 
the situation in which Clarice is placed im- and ° me y 
peratively commands the simultaneous por- Tragedy." 
trayal of a terrific struggle in a woman's 
heart and of the exercise of mimetic talents 
by an accomplished actress. There is but 
little in the play, aside from this situation. 
Clarice is a wife, and herself and her hus- 
band are actors. She has been pursued 
and persecuted with great insolence by a 
Regent of France. Her husband has chal- 
lenged this oppressor, but the challenge has 
been declined with contempt. A prince 



126 



MARY ANDERSON. 



A thrilling 

dramatic 

situation. 



Trans- 
parency in 
acting. 



Appropriate 
scenery. 



cannot fight with an actor. In their desper- 
ate resentment these wronged and infuriated 
lovers contrive a plot to lure the Regent 
into their power and compel him to submit 
to the arbitrament of the sword. The plot 
succeeds. The two men depart into a 
garden to fight their duel, in which one of 
them must surely die. Clarice, momentarily 
left alone, is soon the centre of a brilliant 
throng of guests whom she must entertain. 
They ask a specimen of her art — an illus- 
tration of comedy and tragedy. Clarice, 
listening all the while for the sounds of the 
combat outside, and knowing that perhaps 
her husband may in a moment fall by the 
hand of their loathsome enemy, must act 
the part of a strolling player. This she does, 
and this is the situation. Transparency in 
acting — when you are saying and presenting 
one thing, and thinking and being an- 
other — was lately used by Miss Anderson, 
as Rosalind, with an effect of winning sweet- 
ness. She used it as Clarice with an effect 
of overwhelming tragic power. 

For these two plays only two sets of 
scenery are required. One of them is a 
simple Greek interior — the workshop of a 
sculptor, in ancient Athens. It was com- 



MARY ANDERSON. 127 

posed with simplicity but not with penury. 
The classic life should never be presented 
as either starved or frigid. Miss Anderson 
has given scholarlike attention to each 
detail of the stage embellishment. The set 
for " Comedy and Tragedy" is a handsome 
interior, in a Parisian house, in the time of 
Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans. 

The pathetic experience of Galatea is, 
perhaps, made somewhat less forlorn when 
Pygmalion is represented as horror-stricken 
and remorseful over his own ruthless and 
cruel extinction of her beautiful life. This 
is the view of Pyg?nalion presented by 
Mr. Robertson. His appearance was es- 
sentially classic, his bearing noble, his p yg maiwn. 
delivery of the text flexible, graceful, and 
finely intelligent ; his touches of playful 
humour were made with winning sweetness, 
and his performance was instinct with in- 
cessant refinement. In the after-piece Mr. 
Robertson embodied D'Aulnay with manly 
grace, making him both gentle and impetu- 
ous ; and Mr. Macklin invested the dissolute 
Regent with appropriate attributes of ele- 
gance, hauteur, and menace. The prepara- 
tions for the central scene of this play are, 
perhaps, a little awkward ; the plot is a little 



Mr. Robert- 
son as 



128 



MARY ANDERSON. 



Miss Ander- 
son as the 
strolling 
player. 



incongruous. Only the most outrageous 
provocation could lead a noble-minded 
woman to descend to Clarice's scheme for 
revenge. But the situation, once attained, 
has a prodigious dramatic value. Miss An- 
derson has pressed within the compass of 
this brief piece an astonishing display of 
versatile professional skill. Her treatment 
of the strolling-actor speech is such as would 
only be possible to a close and deep ob- 
server of human life and a proficient deline- 
ator of the varying phases of human nature. 
But there remains a certain natural incon- 
gruity between the character and the actress ; 
and artifice does not sit easily upon her 
artistic method. 



V 

PAULINE 




Pauline 
again. 



expenence 



>iss Anderson has embodied still November 3 . 
another image of beauty and 
nobleness in woman; still an- 
other representative type of the 
of a woman's heart. She has 
appeared as Pauline, in the comedy of " The 
Lady of Lyons." Like her previous works, 
this performance conspicuously shows the 
power and value of devoted earnestness in 
the service of art for its own sake. In other 
hands "The Lady of Lyons" has sometimes 
seemed to be trivial ; in her hands it is shown 
to be worthy of the best thought that can be 
expended upon it. This, on the threshold 
of achievement, is a victory. 

It long has been a critical custom to 
deride this comedy; but the custom is 
neither just nor wise. There is, no doubt, 
7* I2 9 



Unwise to 
disparage 
" The Lady 
of Lyons." 



130 



Theatrical 
value of the 
old comedy. 



Love easily 
satirised, but 
not the less 
noble. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

improbability at the basis of its plot; ex- 
travagance in some of its incidents ; such an 
excess of sentiment in its spirit as must 
naturally repel the conventional mind ; and 
there is a distinct tinge of artifice in its 
language. Yet it embodies a representative 
experience and it presents an exalted 
ideal of the passion of love, and of human 
nature as affected by that passion, which is 
of almost universal significance. It can 
easily be turned into ridicule — but so can 
everything else in life. Its story, like 
that of " Ruy Bias," for example, or that of 
"The Stranger," is the story of a man's 
idolatry for a woman, and what came of 
it ; and this theme has ever been the easy 
prey of the scorner. Lord Byron — who of 
all the poets had been most capable of feel- 
ing it — long ago led the satirists in this 
path, making human love the especial mark 
of that heart-broken satire of his which so 
often shows the woful eyes behind the mock- 
ing laugh. But the truth is not to be re- 
pelled by laughter. There are, and always 
will be, men and women capable of sublime 
conduct under the stress of human passion ; 
and the work of art which presents in an 
adequate manner this possible aspect of 



MARY ANDERSON. 



131 



experience possesses a potent beneficent 
influence that no ridicule can invalidate — 
for it ennobles all persons who can under- 
stand it, by its simple teaching of fidelity to 
the religion of the heart, no matter what 
adverse circumstances may environ the out- 
ward life. 

" The Lady of Lyons " is a work of this 
kind. It can be spoiled by insincerity in 
the stage treatment of it. It exacts pro- 
found earnestness and apt suitability in M *w dd «** 

*■ J redeemed by 

those who represent it. When acted in the sincerity, 
right spirit it is truthful, tender, pathetic, 
and impressive. The extravagances are for- 
gotten. The tawdriness of the style passes 
unnoticed. It cannot, indeed, be said that 
Bulwer has treated the theme of self-sacri- 
fice for love's sake with the stalwart strength 
and in the large, broad manner of a Victor 
Hugo, as shown in such a book as " The 
Toilers of the Sea " ; but certainly he has 
treated it well. It was his favourite theme. Alesso ? from 

.bulwer s 

It runs through many of his works. The novels. 
novels of " Godolphin," "Harold," and 
"Zanoni" might particularly be cited as 
examples of his ideal. Magnanimity, self- 
sacrifice, devotion, dignity, sweetness — 
these are the elements of character and 



132 



MARY ANDERSON. 



conduct that he aimed especially to extol ; 
and these attributes, as much exemplified 
by Pauline as by Claude Melnotte, are ex- 
tolled with passionate fervour in " The Lady 
of Lyons." 

An accomplished artist in acting is able 

to assume and portray many diverse and 

contrasted parts. Yet it will be perceived 

by students of this subject, if they duly 

Necessity of nee d the lessons of experience, that the best 

correspond- pieces of acting that ever have been given — 

ence between ^^ ^^ haye j mparte( i the most Q f h ap _ 
an actor and > x x 

an ideal. piness and attracted the most of human 
sympathy — are such as rest upon harmony 
between the ideal and the actor. The best 
actor, indeed, is not one who presents his 
every-day self. There can be no art with- 
out imagination. But the most potent and 
the most salutary acting ensues when the 
actor can freely impart to an ideal form 
that higher self, that rare compound of 
imagination, feeling, spirit, and character, 
which is within and above his ordinary and 
usual identity. 

Miss Anderson's ideal of Pauline is in- 
tuitive rather than reflective. She has 
evidently given careful thought to the 
artistic form and expression of the work; 



MARY ANDERSON. ^3 

but she has assumed the investiture of its Miss Ander- 

spirit spontaneously and without meditation J^J^ 

or effort. The cold elegance, the uncon- Pauline. 

scious haughtiness, the icy refinement, and 

the pure and beautiful simplicity of Pauline's 

nature are elements included in her own ; 

so that her presence, before anything is said 

or done, at once explains and justifies the 

circumstances that surround her. Fate is 

character. This effect in acting ought never 

to be overlooked — for, indeed, the whole 

vital question of the matter depends upon 

its presence or its absence. The ordinary 

actor can obtain no effect without labour for intrinsic 

it : and even then it excites no ardour of charm more 

* victorious 

responsive feeling. Genius, on the other than labour. 
hand, conquers instantly by its intrinsic 
charm. The rich and royal nature that 
burns beneath Miss Anderson's acting is the 
crowning glory of it, and this will give to 
her a permanent and noble fame through 
whatever years of conquest remain before 
her, and long after the petty voices of con- 
temporary detraction are silent in the dust. 
Her quality, like her career, is unique and 
incomparable. More wildness of human 
passion, more of the desolate pathos of the 
ruined life and the wandering soul, was 



134 

Adelaide 
Neilson and 
Ellen Terry. 



Characteris- 
tic attributes 
of Mary 
Anderson. 



Under- 
currents of 
meaning. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

seen in the acting of Adelaide Neilson. 
More of a certain exquisite frenzy, more 
physical abandonment, and a more assured 
command of the arts of high comedy are 
seen in that of Miss Ellen Terry. But no 
other union, such as exists in Miss Ander- 
son, of cold intellect with affluent physical 
beauty, perfect refinement of womanhood, 
and fairy-like grace and liberty of condition, 
— the fine aerial human spirit typifying the 
glorious freedom of the sea-bird that skims 
the white-crested billows of the lonely sea, — 
has appeared upon the stage of our time. 
Each successive performance of hers only 
deepens this conviction ; and in presence of 
this finished work Of art — a work that 
charms by grace of artistic form and fas- 
cinates by a lovely vitality of nature — it is 
but justice that this judgment should be 
expressed with explicit force. 

For it is by no means easy to convey to 
others, as this actress has conveyed, not 
simply the experience of her heroine, but, 
back of that experience, the lesson of what 
woman endures and suffers when she loves. 
The subject is one upon which it seems 
almost a sacrilege to touch. In her treat- 
ment of the two cottage scenes Miss 



MARY ANDERSON. ,or 

Anderson not only expressed the resentment 
of wounded honour, the struggle of a proud 
spirit to subdue a passionate love, the be- 
wildered, afflicting sense of impending loss 
and sorrow, the ecstasy of exultation over 
vindicated worth, and the sharp, blighting ^^ 8 ^ 
sense of irremediable bereavement ; but, by scenes, 
the light which is within her own spirit, by 
a deep, sympathetic intuition, she displayed 
the whole pathetic picture of what is pass- 
ing in many human hearts, and thus for one 
superb moment illumined the whole dark 
abyss of human grief. During the first 
cottage scene she gives supremacy to 
Pauline's pride. It is only at the close that 
she allows the heart to speak; but when 
that moment comes her expression of the 
piteous helplessness of an angelic woman 
who loves and suffers in vain is more 
pathetic than words can say, and has a 
meaning that no true man can contemplate 
except with humility and awe. The picture pic^^n e 
in the fifth act, when Pauline is discovered Act v. 
sitting by the fireside, will long be remem- 
bered for its exquisite grace. Mr. Forbes- 
Robertson acted Claude Melnotte for the 
first time in his life, and he accomplished a 
delicate task with artistic discretion. 



Nov. 12. 



Miss Ander- 
son's crown- 
ing victory. 




VI 

JULIET 

ast night, in presence of a great 
representative audience, Miss 
Anderson impersonated Shake- 
speare's Juliet, and therein she 
gave a performance which is worthy to be 
recorded as the crowning splendour of her 
professional life. The tragedy of " Romeo 
and Juliet" was set upon the stage in a 
magnificent scenic dress, and with a careful 
cast of its characters, and the general drift 
of it was to create a natural and pathetic 
illusion. The effort has been made in this 
revival, and has succeeded, to display the 
beginning, the progress, and the fulfilment 
of a tragical experience in human life, amid 
surroundings that are truthful to the element 
of fact in the dramatic story, and at the 
same time harmonious with the exalted 

il6 






MARY ANDERSON. 

spirit — now voluptuous and romantic, now 
passionate, tragic, and terrible, but always 
tremulous with vague menace and impend- 
ing danger — by which that story is en- 
wrapt. An old civilisation, the repose of 
massive towers, the solidity and picturesque 
beauty of time-worn buildings, the strength 
and peace of aged and mossy trees, the 
cool gloom and awful splendour of ancient 
churches, the mystery and silence of dark 
cathedral crypts, the climate of the South, 
the glimmering glory of moonlit summer 
nights — all these were needful, in Shake- 
speare's scheme, as a background to the 
story of " Romeo and Juliet." For such a 
background his text makes ample provision. 
But the play is not treated correctly when 
it is treated as a pageant. Just as a man 
should not be subordinate to his apparel, 
so a play should not be subordinate to its 
attire. The true and right way is to let the 
scenery grow out of the drama and crystal- 
lise around it. This law has been respected 
in the present Shakespearean revival; and 
therefore, although the embellishment is 
elaborate, the result of it is natural. The 
tragedy has not been produced to show 
how well a scenic artist can paint or how 



137 



Essential 
features of 
her produc- 
tion of 
"Romeo and 
Juliet." 



The scenery 
is a conse- 
quence of the 
play. 



138 



Distin- 
guished 
scenic artists. 



A truthful 
and beautiful 
setting. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

skilfully a stage machinist can work his 
cords, but it has been brought forward for 
the sake of what it contains and what it sig- 
nifies, and it has simply been provided with 
such illustration as might help to make the 
spectator forget that he is looking at a fic- 
tion, and thus render more real to his imag- 
ination and his heart a poetic picture, at 
once beautiful and terrible, of the passion 
and agony of human life that is shipwrecked 
by human love. There are seventeen dis- 
tinct scenes. They were painted from 
sketches made in Verona. The most and 
the best of them were produced by O'Conor, 
Hawes Craven, and Bruce Smith. Several 
of the paintings are worthy of a permanent 
place in the archives of art. The public 
square and the churchyard, by O'Conor, 
the grove of sycamores, by Craven, and the 
Friar's cell, by Bruce Smith, will be remem- 
bered as perfect works for the purpose that 
they serve — and something more. It may 
be said, indeed, — and it never could truth- 
fully be said before, with reference to any 
revival that has been made of " Romeo and 
Juliet," — that whoever looks upon the scenes 
which have been provided by Miss Ander- 
son for this production has looked upon 



MARY ANDERSON. 139 

Verona itself, has listened to the rustling 
of leaves in the scented air of the southern 
night, and heard the nightingale sing in the 
dusky Italian woods. 

It often must have been observed that 
Shakespeare expends his intellectual force 
more lavishly upon the study and analysis shake- 
of man than upon the study and analysis speare's men 
of woman. Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, ™ r °^ n u th a n 
Iago, Brutus, Cassius, Coriolanus, Shy lock, his women. 
Falstaff — each of these is an elaborate, 
comprehensive, profound, and completed 
study. There is scarcely one of Shake- 
speare's women who, in close comparison 
with either of these men, seems much more 
than a sketch. Imogen, Cleopatra, and Rosa- 
lind are, perhaps, the most specifically de- 
picted of all his heroines. Juliet, drawn 
with a few bold touches and simply placed sk "^ e f 
in a few great representative situations, seems Juliet. 
rather to be outlined and suggested than 
actually and minutely portrayed. In this 
beautiful and lamentable image of passion- 
ate devotion and still more passionate sor- 
row the poet's object seems to have been to 
declare, once for all, what a true woman's 
heart feels and suffers when it loves and ~ . & , . 

Drift of the 

loses its love. Such an utterance, he must tragedy. 



140 



It was writ- 
ten in Shake- 
speare's 
youth. 



Superiority 
of the later 
tragedies. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

have felt, would be an essential part of his 
authentic and celestial message to the hu- 
man race. He gave it, however, before he 
had attained to a complete mastery of him- 
self and his literary implements, and before 
yet his conquest of the entire domain of 
human thought and feeling had been accom- 
plished. He was only twenty-seven when 
he first touched this subject, and, although 
he returned upon it in later years, his work 
was not relieved of that florid strain, that 
artificial use of rhymed lines, that sketch- 
like treatment of character, and that slight 
vagueness of general significance which are 
the indications of his immaturity. His 
tragedy of " Romeo and Juliet " is, undoubt- 
edly, a powerful, noble, eloquent exposition 
of passion and misery ; but, somewhat un- 
like the greater tragedies of his perfect 
maturity, it does not entirely and profoundly 
display the character through the emotion. 
When he came to depict Lady Macbeth and 
Cleopatra he could show human passions 
inextricably blended with the diversified at- 
tributes of definite human personality. He 
did not do this with Juliet. When this 
afflicted woman is separated from her pas- 
sion and her misery she fades, as an actual 



MARY ANDERSON. 



(41 



identity, almost into the realm of conjecture. 
When first presented in the play she is sim- 
ply a beautiful girl, sweet, innocent, artless, 
obedient, whose heart has not yet been Ju/ f eias & xl 

J t and as 

awakened, and whose mind and will, con- woman, 
tented in the physical joy of blooming 
youthful life, are merely pleased and pas- , 
sive. Throughout the whole of her first - - 
scene, which is not a short one, she only 
speaks about fifty words. It is only when 
her eyes have looked into the eyes of Romeo 
and her heart has leaped to his that she 
becomes a woman indeed, and begins to 
reveal, in her words and in her conduct, the 
attributes of her individual nature. Yet 
even then, in the line of treatment that 
Shakespeare chose to follow, there remains ^^J^ 1 "" 
much scope for the actress of Juliet to rein- actress, 
force the character with her own personality. 
Miss Anderson has observed and has com- 
pletely fulfilled this opportune condition. 
By the affluence of her own nature, by the 
extraordinary correspondence existing be- 
tween herself and the Shakespearean ideal, 
and by a finished and beautiful art, — through 
which her impetuous feeling is guided with Miss Ander- 
firm intellectual purpose, and made all the so " V° lvl " 

r r 7 ual character 

more affecting by repose, — she has imparted and power. 



142 



The best 
Juliet of our 
time. 



Nature of 
true love. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

to Juliet an individual life of definite and 
delightful character, as well as a tempest of 
emotion and the dark and desolate grandeur 
of tragic death. 

In January, 1882, when Miss Anderson 
last enacted Juliet here, she had become the 
best Juliet on the American stage ; and as 
such she was then described and character- 
ised in print, by the writer of these words. 
She is more than that now. Her perform- 
ance at that time was right in stage con- 
vention, magnetic and noble in loveliness 
of spirit, touched with the glamour of woful 
passion, and fraught with a tremendous 
energy of sincere purpose. In the scenes 
with Romeo she made Juliet tender and 
simple. The love that she denoted was not 
the animal love that devours and destroys 
(that sensual frenzy of the beast which so 
much of contemporary criticism has declared 
to be the only true and genuine article), but 
the love that hallows and cherishes, and 
would give all to procure the possession and 
the happiness of its object. Her desolation 
in that supreme moment when, after the last 
parting with the JVurse, the poor, doomed 
girl enters into her bleak and tragic solitude, 
was instinct with a sublime pathos. Her 



MARY ANDERSON. j^ 

frenzy in the climax of the potion scene and 
her utter recklessness of passionate misery 
in the suicide were thrilling and piteous, 
and they were expressed with well-con- 
sidered art. Her present performance of 
Juliet follows the precise lines which are 
thus suggested ; but in a strange and subde 
way, which it is much more easy to feel than 
to describe, the actress has converted what Passion ilIu . 
formerly was mostly a piece of stage art into mines art. 
a vital and burning reality of positive human ! 
life. Her mechanism is widely different 
from what it used to be. All formality has 
disappeared. The first entrance of Juliet, as 
she puts aside the curtain .and stands in the 
stairway arch, is the easy, natural disclosure 
of the simple girl amid her accustomed 
domestic surroundings. This felicity of 
grace in the treatment of external matters — 
the form, the ceremony, the convention, ra< ; ean 

J 7 7 precision of 

the photography of ordinary life — pervaded details. 
the impersonation. No detail has been left 
to chance. The stricken figure of the 
beautiful girl, who has already had her 
death-blow at the hand of love, standing 
there in the darkening hall when the revel 
is ended and the guests are gone away, is 
seen at once to be a perfect emblem of 



144 

The touch of 
foreboding. 



Omits 
Juliet's 
scene of 
frenzy. 



Composure 
at the sum- 
mit of ex- 
citement. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

consummate dramatic art. On the balcony 
she has the absorbed manner of true reverie, 
and her ardour is sweetly touched and sub- 
dued by the vague apprehension, no less 
than the maiden purity, that is at her heart. 
" I have no joy in this contract to-night." 
In the teasing scene with the Nurse all her 
stage business is devised to create and 
sustain the effect of entirely childlike petu- 
lance, wilfulness, caprice, and charm. The 
cloud has lifted now, and the vague omen 
is for a moment forgotten. Julie fs " ban- 
ished "scene Miss Anderson now omits — 
just as Miss Neilson did, and wisely; for it 
conflicts with Romeo's kindred scene, and it 
anticipates a dramatic effect which should 
not arrive so soon. Her parting with Romeo 
has the sad reality of literal grief, and it is 
managed in such a way as to deepen an 
almost insufferable sense of bereavement 
and hopeless sorrow. Her calm despair — 
which is obviously the extreme tension of 
suffering and dead stillness of excitement — 
after the Nurse has gone, and the time has 
come for taking the dread alternative of a 
simulated death, was so actual that it seemed 
to strike a blow upon the heart. In the 
final crisis — the awakening in the tomb, 



MARY ANDERSON. ^ 

the perception of defeat and ruin, and the 

fatal act which now alone can repair what 

fate has ravaged — she rose easily into 

tragic grandeur, making the theatre and all 

its accessories to be forgotten, and leaving 

only the solemn and awful conviction that final effect. 

there are times when only death can be 

deemed triumphant and it is better to die 

than to live. 

For the continuity of this achievement a 
more studious art and continual practice 
might account ; but for its vitality of identi- 
fication and its afflicting significance the 
motive must be sought in something deeper 
than the impulse of art. It is no longer the The heart 
imagination that speaks, through this re- now . tr ^" 
markable performance; it is the heart, imagination. 
Miss Anderson found Juliet— as all ob- 
servers find her — a shadowy ideal of love 
and grief. She has left her a distinct and 
superb woman, animated throughout the 
whole line of her conduct, from the moment 
when she becomes aware of herself, with 
noble principle and heroic fidelity, not less 
than with passionate, heroic love. She has 
presented a personality that can be defined 
and described. Nothing but the intuition _ . . . 

° 1 he intuition 

of genius could have accomplished this of genius. 
8 



146 



Shake- 



portraiture 
of human 
misery. 



His great 
men and 
women are 
worldly 
failures. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

result — at once bringing the character 
into brilliant relief, and writing, as in lines 
of white fire upon a midnight sky, that 
hopeless word which is the final result and 
comprehensive lesson of all the tragic plays 
of Shakespeare — misery. 

For that is where his thought ended. He 
reflected the evanescent and mournful pag- 
eant of human life as he saw it to exist, and 
he suggested no relief to the picture. He 
may not have been sufficiently mature to 
put forth all his power in " Romeo and 
Juliet," but in so far as he did exert that 
power he exerted it in the direction of the 
truth. Misery and not happiness is the 
predominant theme of this play — as it 
afterward was of " Hamlet " and kindred 
works. This world is not a rose garden, 
and happiness is not the earthly destiny of 
man. The great men and women in Shake- 
speare are those that the common mind of 
the world would invariably regard as fail- 
ures. Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, 
Coriolanus, Timon — all of them drift into 
ruin. Romeo fails ; not only because fate is 
against him, but because of a certain per- 
verse melancholy and ingrained, enervating 
dejection which taints his spirit and would 



MARY ANDERSON. I47 

inevitably defeat his life. Juliet, thrilled 
and absorbed with passionate idolatry of 
another human being, utterly overwhelmed 
with emotion that heeds no reason and 
brooks no restraint, is the personification 
of love, and therefore fatal to herself. The 
glittering Mercutio, the choleric, gallant 
Tybalt, the fair and gentle Paris, the gay The dismal 
and amiable Benvolio — all perish in their JjJ^j^^, 
youthful prime. Romeo 's mother dies of a and Juliet" 
broken heart. All through the woof of life 
runs this thread of perversion and calamity. 
But at the basis of Juliet's personality and 
experience, equally with those of Romeo, 
there is a deeper and darker truth — a sort 
of preordination of evil which is to spring 
from the sovereign emotion of humanity. 
All great passion isolates the heart by which Great love 
it is possessed. Certain natures are born to ' 'JJ^ of 
sorrow, and the impending calamity of a great sorrow, 
malignant fate darkens with sombre pre- 
sentiment even their dawn of life, and 
sequesters them in a mournful strangeness 
from their fellow-creatures of the earth. The 
key-note is sounded by Juliet, the moment 
her heart awakens: "Too early seen un- 
known, and known too late." The same Presenti . 
presentiment has already settled upon the ment. 



148 



Miss Ander- 
son's Juliet 
a great per- 
formance. 



Stage embel- 
lishment. 



Historic 
period. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

soul of Romeo : " My mind misgives some 
consequence yet hanging in the stars." It 
is because Miss Anderson has at length 
grasped this whole subject in this spirit and 
developed Juliet under this inexorable light 
of truth that her impersonation should be 
recognised and recorded as an achievement 
of true greatness in the art to which she 
has devoted her life, and which she has so 
long made tributary to results of public 
beneficence as well as personal renown. 

In the setting of this tragedy, under Miss 
Anderson's direction, the time, the place, 
the climate, the period of the year, the 
duration of the action, and the character of 
the piece have been thoughtfully considered. 
The year of the story of " Romeo and 
Juliet," judging from an allusion made by 
the Nurse, — " 'tis since the earthquake now 
eleven years," — is 1359; Verona having 
been visited by a dreadful earthquake in 
1348. Another allusion made by the Nurse 
signifies the season of the year and almost 
the exact date. Juliet will be fourteen 
years of age on Lammas eve — which is the 
first of August — and when the play opens 
it wants a "fortnight and odd days" of 
that date. The action begins, accordingly, 



MARY ANDERSON. I49 

on or about the 14th of July, and Shake- Time of 
speare has so carefully dated its incidents action " 
as to show that they fall out within five 
days. Such details have been respected, 
and the result is a scholar-like and superb 
production. 

Morning and midnight touch their lips 
together in this brilliant, desolate tragedy. 
No one who has had youth can think 
of it without remembering a sacred time 
when the flowers smelt sweeter than they 
do now, and the winds were softer, and Love ' s 

young 

in the hush of the night there was a dream, 
celestial mystery, and the stars seemed 
friends, and the affairs of human beings 
were infinitely remote and trivial. Then 
one pair of eyes was worshipped, and one 
voice was all there is of music, and life 
was exalted into sanctity. That time can 
never be called back. Scarcely, in the tur- 
moil of the world, does any man realise 
that ever it existed. But Shakespeare knew Shake 
it and could surcharge his mind with its speare's 
spirit and colour, and he has poured that knowl ^ d & e 

' r m 7 * i of the human 

spirit through the current of this exquisite heart 
poem of love, disappointment, and irre- 
mediable anguish. Sometimes, whether in 
reading these scenes or viewing them, one 



150 



What the 
tragedy of 
" Romeo 
and Juliet " 
should teach. 



Rest at last. 



MARY ANDERSON. 

feels a sudden throb of infinite pain, and 
seems to hear in his heart a mournful voice 
speaking unintelligible words of sorrow. 
Not to all natures comes forth this subtle 
meaning ; but surely that nature is not to be 
envied which, under the stress and strain of 
this tragedy, is not made more sympathetic 
with the terrible earnestness of love ; more 
tender toward youth; more wishful to 
sweeten and prolong its period of romance, 
and to shield it from contact with the 
selfishness and the dreary commonplaces of 
the world. Nor is that nature enviable 
which is not touched by the awful, closing 
picture of love's calamity and ruin. Never, 
surely, were passion, anguish, and death so 
well enshrined as under the starless sky that 
bends over the broken tomb of the Capulets, 
while the cold night- wind moans around it, 
and dark branches wave in sorrow above 
the white, still faces of those true lovers 
who have died for love. Never was there 
a sadder spectacle! Yet never did a spec- 
tacle so sad present at last a sense of relief 
so sweet, so absolute, so holy. The sternest 
moralist upon mortal destiny, as he muses 
beside that hallowed sepulchre, may well be 
tempted to murmur the sad words of Swin- 



MARY ANDERSON. ^j 

burne, in " The Garden of Proserpine " — impiora 
pagan, yet deeply significant, hopeless, yet pace * 
full of comfort : 

From too much love of living, 

From hope and fear set free, 
We thank with brief thanksgiving 

Whatever gods may be — 
That no life lives for ever, 
That dead men rise up never, 
That even the weariest river 

Flows somewhere safe to sea. 




NOTE. 

Miss Anderson's theatrical business affairs, from 
the time of her first appearance on the stage till the 
time of her first professional visit to England, were 
managed, under her personal direction, by Dr. Ham- 
ilton Griffin. Her two seasons in England, 1883-85, 
and her tour of America, 1885-86, were directed by 
Mr. Henry E. Abbey. Miss Anderson sailed from 
Queenstown on September 28, 1883, aboard the 
Gallia, and landed in New York on October 6. Her 
English dramatic company, brought over for this 
American tour, comprised the following actors : John- 
stone Forbes Robertson, Frank Henry Macklin, 
James George Taylor, Kenneth Black, Sidney Hayes, 
Arthur Lewis, Henry Vernon, Thomas Bindloss, 
Lewis Gillispee, Henry Sainsbury, Thomas Gaytie, 
Joseph Anderson, Mr. Stewart, Adeline (Mrs. John) 
Billington, Adelaide (Mrs. Charles) Calvert, Blanche 
(Mrs. F. H)Macklin,Miss Zeffie Tilbury, and Mrs. 
K. Black. Miss Eloise Willis, Miss Mary Ayrton 
(Mrs. C. J. A bud), Mr. Thomas Strong, and Mr. 



Joshua Mintz were subsequently added to it. Miss 
Anderson's American season, beginning on October 
12, i88j, and ending on May 22, 1886, lasted thirty- 
one weeks. She gave two hundred and ten perform' 
ances, visiting, in succession, New York, Boston, 
Providence, New Haven, Hartford, Worcester, Spring- 
field, Troy, Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, Brook- 
lyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, 
Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis, 
Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Omaha, Denver, 
Salt Lake City, Sacramento, San Francisco, Chicago, 
Boston, and New York. Her farewell week in New 
York was signalised by the production of "Ingomar," 
May 18, 1 886. She took leave of the American 
public on Saturday evening, May 22, and sailed, on 
June 3, aboard the Britannic, for her adopted home 
in England. 



THE STAGE LIFE 



MARY ANDERSON 



BY 



WILLIAM WINTER 



'Like a great sea-mark, standing every flato 
And saving those that eye thee." 

— Shakespeare. 



NEW-YORK 

GEORGE J. COOMBES 

1886 



v.t -\;t* 






LIBRARY^OF CONGRESS 




010 638 676 6 












■♦.v.** 












■ 
















I , 4r!*k*! i wfR 



■ 



i ■ 

»V/,V k y, fin/ 



